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The  philosophy  of  religion 


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PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 


BOOKS  BY  GEORGE  TRUMBULL  LADD,  LL.D. 

Published  by  CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


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*     NOV  22  19: 
THE 


r-'  r* — > 


'■^iisiui  sty.' 

PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 


A  CRITICAL  AND   SPECULATIVE  TREATISE   OF  MAN'S 

RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE   AND   DEVELOPMENT 

IN    THE    LIGHT    OF   MODERN    SCIENCE 

AND      REFLECTIVE     THINKING 


BY         y 

GEORGE  TRUMBULL  LADD,  LL.D. 

FOBMEBLY  PBOFKSSOB  OF  PHILOSOPHY  IN  YALE  UNIVEBSITY 


VOLUME    II 


NEW   YORK 

CHARLES  SCKIBNKR'S  SONS 
1000 


Copyright,  1905, 
By  Charles  Scbibner's  Sons 


Published,  October,  1905. 


X 


"All  living  Things  are  indebted  to  Thy  goodness, 
.     .     .     .     It  is  Thou  alone,  O  Lord,  who  art  the 
true  Parent  of  all  things."  Prayer  to  Shanq  Ti. 

"Among  themselves  all  things 
Have   order;  and   from   hence   the   form,   which   makes 
The  Universe  resemble  God."  Dante. 

"Is  not  God  i'  the  world  His  power  first  made? 
Is  not  His  love  at  issue  still  with  sin, 
Visibly  when  a  wrong  is  done  on  earth?"  Browning. 


CONTENTS  OF  VOLUME  II 

PART   IV 

GOD:   THE  OBJECT  OF  RELIGIOUS  FAITH 

CHAPTER  XXVI 

importance  op  the  conception 

Page 

The  Change  in  Point  of  View  —  The  Conception  of  Divine  Being  —  Its 

Influence  on  Morals  —  and  on  Social  and  Political  Life  —  Positive 

Content  of  the  Christian  Conception  —  Influence  on  Philosophical 

Development  —  God,  the  Central  Problem  of  Religion  —  Indiffer- 

entism,  Syncretism,  and  Agnosticism  —  The  Removal  of  Prejudice      3 

CHAPTER  XXVII 

NATURE    OF   THE    EVIDENCE 

The  Two  Problems  involved  —  Knowledge  and  Faith  distinguished  — 
Conception  of  the  "Unknowable"  —  Theory  of  Rational  Intuition 
—  The  "Vision  of  God"  — The  so-called  "God-Consciousness"  — 
The  Claim  of  Demonstration  —  The  Experience  of  the  Race  —  An- 
thropomorphism again 21 

CHAPTER  XXVIII 

THE    CUSTOMARY    PROOFS    EXAMINED 

Use  of  the  Word  "Proof"  —  The  Ontological  Argument  —  Anselm  and 
Descartes  —  The  Cosmologioal  Argument  —  The  Conception  of  a 
World-Ground  —  The  Teleologicul  Argument  —  Conception  of  Uni- 
versiil  Order  —  Tiie  Moral  Argument  —  The  Argument  from  Human 
Ideals 45 

CHAPTER  XXIX 

THE    ARGUMENT    RECONSTRUCTED 

Necessity  for  Criticism  —  The  Nature  of  the  Task  —  Further  as  to  the 
Conception  of  a  World-Ground  —  The  Unity  of  Reality  —  Force 
expressive  of  Will  —  Irnmiinence  of  Mind  —  Will  and  Mind  as  Con- 
acioua  —  Negative  Conception  of  the  Unconscioua  —  Possibility  of 


viii  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

Page 
an  Absolute  Self-Consciousnes,3  —  Bearing  of  the  Categories  —  The 
Personal  Absolute  —  God  as  Ethical  Being  —  Conception  of  Per- 
sonal Life 66 

CHAPTER  XXX 

GOD   AS   INFINITE    AND    ABSOLUTE 

Purely  Negative  Notions  Valueless  —  The  Absolute  not  the  Unrelated 

—  The  Infinite  not  the  Unknowable  —  Adjective  Nature  of  the 
Terms  —  Quantitative  Meaning  inapplicable  to  Persons  —  The  Ab- 
soluteness of  Self-hood  —  Ideal  Being  of  the  World-Ground  .     .     .  107 

CHAPTER  XXXI 

THE    METAPHYSICAL    PREDICATES 

Meaning  of  the  Term  —  Conception  of  Omnipotence  —  of  Omnipresence 

—  and  of  Eternity  —  The  Divine  Omniscience  —  Nature  of  Time- 
Consciousness  —  Self-Consciousness  and  Other-Consciousness  of  God 

—  The  Unity  of  God 122 

CHAPTER  XXXII 

THE    PROBLEM    OF   EVIL 

Deficiencies  in  the  Conception  of  Personal  Absolute  —  The  Problem  of 
Evil  unsolvable  —  Estimates  of  Happiness  and  Misery  —  Estimates 
of  Moral  Evil  —  Pain  as  Means  of  Development  —  The  Defects  of 
the  "Medicinal  Theory"  —  Problem  of  Evil  as  a  Theodicy  —  Help 
from  the  Theory  of  Development  —  The  Answer  of  Ethical  Dualism 

—  The  Answer  of  Monistic  Philosophy  —  Brahmanism  and  Bud- 
dhism —  The  Christian  Answer  —  The  Individual  and  the  World     .  146 

CHAPTER  XXXIII 

THE    MORAL   ATTRIBUTES 

God  as  Ethical  Spirit  —  The  Divine  Justice  —  Belief  in  its  Perfection 

—  The  Attribute  of  Goodness  —  Christian  Conception  of  God  — 
The  Stoical  Conception  —  The  Logos  Doctrine  —  Religious  Pessi- 
mism —  Perfection  of  the  Divine  Moral  Attributes 177 

CHAPTER  XXXIV 

HOLINESS   AND    PERFECTION    OF   GOD 

Unethical  Conceptions  of  Holiness  —  The  Ideal  of  Ethics  —  Jesus'  Con- 
ception of  Purity  —  Defects  of  Historical  Christianity  —  The  Divine 
Wisdom  —  Union  of  the  Metaphysical  Predicates  and  Moral  At- 
tributes —  God  as  the  Ideal -Real  —  Absolute  Will  as  perfect  Good- 
Will   200 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  ix 


PART  V 

GOD  AND  THE   WORLD 

CHAPTER  XXXV 

the  theistic  position 

Page 

Reality  of  the  Divine  Relations  —  The  Concept  of  Relation  —  The  Rela- 
tions of  Dependence  and  of  Manifestation  —  The  Figurative  Speech 
of  Theism  —  The  Conflict  between  Theism  and  Science  —  The  Rec- 
onciliation of  Science  and  Theology  —  The  two  Forms  of  Denial  .  221 

CHAPTER    XXXVI 

ATHEISM   AND    PANTHEISM 

The  Denial  of  Agnosticism  —  Religious  and  anti-Religious  Agnosticism 

—  The  Content  of  Truth  —  Materialism  —  The  modern  Conception 
of  Mechanism  —  Failure  of  Mechanism  as  a  Principle  —  A  Develop- 
ing Mechanism  —  The  Position  of  Pantheism  —  The  Conception  of 
Identification  —  The  Truth  of  Pantheism  —  The  Supremacy  of  Per- 
sonal Being 237 

CHAPTER  XXXVII 

NATURE    AND   THE    SUPERNATURAL 

Complexity  of  the  Terms  employed  —  The  Existing  Conceptions  — 
Distinction  between  the  Two  —  The  Standpoint  of  Science  —  Limits 
to  the  Conception  of  Nature  —  Deficiencies  of  the  Naturalistic  View 

—  God  as  the  Supernatural  —  Immanency  and  Transcendency  — 
Jesus'  View  of  Nature  —  Reconciliation  of  the  two  Conceptions  — 
Return  to  the  Conception  of  A  Personal  Absolute 264 

CHAPTER  XXXVIII 

THEISM    AND    EVOLUTION 

The  Tenet  of  Evolution  —  The  Modem  Conflict  —  The  Two  Forms  of 
the  Theory  —  Materialistic  F.volution  -Evolution  aa  Descriptive 
Historj'  —  The  Metapliysical  Assumptions  of  Science  —  Reconcilia- 
tion of  Science  and  Faith  —  The  Conception  of  Development  as 
applied  to  Divine  l^ing  —  God  as  Personal  Absolute  and  Ethical 
Spirit 290 


X  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XXXIX 

god  as  creator  and  preserver 

Page 
Early  Beliefs  in  "Creator  Gods"  —  Ancient  Cosmogonies  —  Special 
Relation  of  Man  —  God  as  Creator,  Upholder,  and  Destroyer  —  The 
Old-Testament  View  —  The  Doctrine  of  the  Logos  —  Time  and 
Manner  of  Creation  —  Creation  and  Development  —  Idealism  and 
Reahsm  —  Progressive  Making  of  the  "Over-Man" 314 

CHAPTER  XL 

GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE 

Necessity  for  Ethical  Conceptions  —  Absolute  and  Finite  Wills  —  The 
Fact  of  related  Self- Activity  —  Conception  of  God  as  Moral  Ruler 
—  Nature  of  a  Moral  Unity  —  Theanthropic  and  Theocratic  Re- 
ligions —  Deity  as  perfect  Moral  Reason  —  Perfection  of  the  Divine 
Rule  —  Method  of  the  Divine  Rule  —  God  in  Nature  and  Human 
Society  —  Doctrine  of  Universal  Providence  —  The  Supernatural 
in  Nature  —  Corollaries  as  to  the  Place  of  Prayer 344 

CHAPTER  XLI 

GOD  AS   REDEEMER 

Religions  of  Salvation  —  Need  of  Redemption  —  The  Conflict  in  Human 
Nature  —  Conception  of  a  Mediator  —  Doctrines  of  Hinduism  and 
Buddhism  —  Divine  Redemption  in  Judaism  —  Christian  View  of 
God  as  Redeemer  —  Significance  of  Jesus'  Death  —  Reality  of  the 
Divine  Redemption  —  The  Witness  of  Experience  —  The  New  Life 
in  God 382 

CHAPTER  XLII 

REVELATION   AND   INSPIRATION 

Religion  as  Revelation  —  Source,  Subject,  and  Object  of  Revelation  — 
Its  Historical  Nature  —  The  Psychology  of  Revelation  —  Means 
of  Revelation  —  Significance  of  Human  Speech  —  Inspiration  de- 
fined —  A  Relation  between  Persons  —  The  Men  of  Revelation  — 
Christianity  as  Divine  Self-Revealing  —  The  Doctrine  of  Inspired 
Scriptures  —  The  Miracle  as  Means  of  Revelation  —  False  and 
True  Conceptions  of  the  Miraculous  —  Place  of  the  Miraculous  — 
The  Modus  Operandi  of  Revelation  and  Inspiration  —  Religion  as 
the  "Psychic  Uplift"  of  the  Race 410 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  xi 


PART   VI 

THE  DESTINY  OF  MAN 
CHAPTER  XLIII 

THE   FUTURE   OF   RELIGION 

Page 

The  two  Forms  of  Optimism  —  Religion  and  Race-Culture  —  Office  of 
the  Christian  Church  —  "The  Irreligion  of  the  Future"  —  The  Per- 
manence of  Essentials  —  Universality  and  Absoluteness  of  Chris- 
tianity —  The  Rival  Religions  —  The  Final  Testing 453 

CHAPTER  XLIV 

IMMORTALITY    OF   THE    INDIVIDUAL 

Belief  in  Existence  after  Death  —  Causes  for  this  Belief  —  The  "On- 
tological  Consciousness"  again  —  Connection  with  Ancestor-Wor- 
ship —  Various  Conceptions  of  the  Soul  —  Lower  Historical  Forms 
of  the  Belief  —  The  Doctrine  of  Karma  —  Egyptian  Notions  — 
Other  Ancient  Views  —  Greek  Doctrine  of  Man  —  The  Early  He- 
brew Conceptions  —  Old-Testament  Doctrine  —  Later  Judaism  — 
The  Doctrine  of  Jesus  —  and  of  the  New-Testament  —  Later  Chris- 
tian Developments 479 

CHAPTER  XLV 

THE    IMMORTALITY   OF   THE    INDIVIDUAL  [CONTINUED] 

Naturalness  of  the  Belief  in  Immortality  —  Separability  of  the  Soul 
from  the  Body  —  The  two  Ways  of  Believing  —  Modern  Objections 
to  the  Doctrine  —  The  Objections  Answered  —  Conclusion  from 
the  Biological  Standpoint  —  The  Primacy  of  Psychical  Life  —  The 
Problem  of  Developed  Selfhood  —  Arguments  against  Natural  In- 
destnictibility  —  Reality  of  the  Self  —  Value  of  the  Self  —  The 
Positive  Arguments  —  Significance  of  the  Individual  —  The  Guar- 
anty of  the  Moral  Being  of  God  —  The  Witness  of  Religious  Ex- 
perience —  The  Assurance  of  the  Christian  Hope  —  Concluding 
Deductions 516 

CHAPTER  XLVI 

THE    FUTURE    OF   THE    RACE 

The  Conflict  of  Different  Religions  —  The  Christian  Conception  of  th« 
Divine  Kingdom  —  The  Conception  of  the  Church  Universal  —  The 


xii  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

Page 

Uncertainties  of  Scientific  Prediction  —  The  Social  Ideal  —  Rising 
Spirituality  of  the  Race  —  The  Triumph  of  the  Divine  Kingdom  .  550 

CHAPTER  XLVII 

SUMMARY  AND   CONCLUSION 

^Ian  as  potential  Son  of  God  —  Reality  of  the  Religious  Ideal  —  The 
Being  of  the  World  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  —  The  Harmony  of 
the  Totality  of  Spiritual  Experience 567 


PART  IV 

GOD :  THE  OBJECT  OF  RELIGIOUS  FAITH 


il 


Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart;  for  they  shall  see  God."  Jesus. 


"  Worthy  art  thou,  our  Lord  and  our  God,  to  receive  the  glory,  and  the  honor 
and  the  power;  for  thou  didst  create  all  things,  and  because  of  thy  will  they 
were,  and  were  created.''  Apocalypse. 

"/  vrill  pass  then  beyond  this  power  of  my  nature  also,  rising  by  degrees 
unto  Him  who  made  me  ...  .  Yea,  I  will  pass  beyond  it,  that  I  may  approach 
unto  Thee,  0  sweet  Light."  Augustine. 

"Whom  shall  we  worship  but  Him,  who  is  the  sole  King  of  the  seeing  and 
living  creation  ?  "  Rig  Veda. 

"There  is  only  one  thing  needful;  to  know  God."  Amiel. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF   RELIGION 


PART  IV 

GOD:  THE  OBJECT  OF  RELIGIOUS  FAITH 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  CONCEPTION 

A  certain  obvious  change  in  the  point  of  view  and  in  the 
method  of  discussion  now  becomes  necessary  in  order  to  make 
further  progress  toward  a  systematic  and  satisfactory  treatment 
of  the  more  important  problems  of  the  philosophy  of  religion. 
The  method  of  the  phenomenology  of  man's  religious  experience 
is  comparative,  historical,  and  psychological.  But  the  method 
for  determining  the  truth  of  these  phenomena  is  critical,  syn- 
thetic, speculative.  As  was  explained  with  sufficient  fullness  in 
the  last  chapter,  it  is  therefore  proposed  from  this  point  onward 
to  subject  the  religious  conceptions,  beliefs,  sentiments,  and 
practices  which  humanity  has  cherished — especially  in  the 
form  wliich  they  have  attained  as  the  result  of  their  highest 
development  in  the  past — to  the  judgment  of  that  supreme 
court  which  universal  reason  provides. 

It  is  fitting,  then,  that  we  should  remind  ourselves  anew  of 
certain  rights  whicli  may  be  considered  as  already  guaranteed, 
and  not  less  of  certain  duties  which  are  lx)tli  enjoined  and  de- 
manded. Among  tlie  former  the  chief  and  most  comprehen- 
sive is  the  right  of  the  religious  experience  of  the  race  to  fair 


4  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

and  sympathetic  treatment  from  the  rational  points  of  view 
and  by  the  method  of  systematic  philosophy.  Such  treatment 
guards  the  conclusions  of  historical  and  psychological  study 
against  the  more  general  objections  of  Agnosticism  and  Posi- 
tivism. As  to  the  abstract  possibility  of  establishing  any  truth 
whatever  respecting  the  realities  of  man's  religious  knowledge 
or  religious  faith,  the  philosophy  of  religion  is  under  no  obli- 
gation to  argue.  This  important  aspect  of  human  experience 
has  the  same  rights  as  any  other  to  be  defended  by  the  critical 
studies  of  epistemology  and  metaphysics.  And  we  cannot 
keep  on  raising  the  question  over  and  over  again,  whether  man 
can  know  anything  worthy  of  being  called  "  real,"  in  the  fullest 
possible  ontological  signification  of  that  very  misty  and  much 
abused  word.  What  we  have  said  in  other  works,  and  in  cer- 
tain chapters  of  this  treatise  on  religion,^  must  suffice  to  explain 
our  confidence  in  the  possibility  of  attaining  truth  about  God 
and  about  man's  relations  to  Him,  through  the  complex  but 
disciplined  activities  of  man's  rational  nature. 

As  to  any  more  definite  conception  of  the  Object  of  religious 
faith,  whether  framed  from  the  point  of  view  held  by  some  one 
of  the  world's  great  religions  or  by  some  one  of  its  various 
schools  of  religious  philosophy,  the  case  is  by  no  means  the 
same.  The  appropriate  and  the  supremely  difficult  task  of 
the  critical  and  speculative  method  of  philosophy  is  directed 
toward  every  such  conception ;  the  special  purpose  of  the 
philosophy  of  religion  is  accomplished  when  some  one  of  them 
all  is  seen  to  unite  most  harmoniously  and  perfectly  with  that 
conception  of  the  Being  of  the  World  which  is  particularly 
favored  by  modern  science  and  reflective  thinking.  For  ex- 
ample, doubt,  or  the  agnostic  position  toward  the  problem  of 
attributing  certain  moral  characteristics  to  this  Being,  and, 
indeed,  toward  the  effort  to  unite  such  conceptions  as  those  of 

1  Especially  in  the  "Philosophy  of  Knowledge"  (chap.  XVIII  and  XXI), 
and  "A  Theory  of  Reality"  (chap.  XVIII  and  XIX);  and  in  chapters 
XII-XIV  of  Volume  I  of  this  v/ork. 


IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  CONCEPTION        5 

"  the  Infinite,"  *'  the  Absolute,"  with  the  fundamental  attri- 
butions of  an  ethically  perfect  Personal  Spirit,  must  be  met 
by  argument  and  as  far  as  possible  removed.  It  is,  then,  with 
the  faith  of  reason  in  itself,  and  yet  with  a  faith  which  is 
chastened  by  a  knowledge  of  its  own  limitations,  that  all  fur- 
ther approach  should  be  made  to  the  discussion  of  the  problems 
before  us. 

Among  the  several  investigations  which  the  phenomena  of 
man's  religious  life  and  development  imperatively  demand, 
that  necessary  for  validating  the  religious  doctrine  of  the  Divine 
Being  stands  preeminent.  Is  the  conception  of  God  as  Abso- 
lute and  also  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  able  to  maintain  itself  in  the 
full  light  of  modern  science  and  modern  philosophy  ?  It  is  well 
to  enter  upon  this  investigation  with  some  preliminary  apprecia- 
tion of  its  importance  for  a  system  of  religious  philosophy. 

The  importance  of  the  conception  of  Divine  Being,  both  for 
thought  and  for  life,  follows  from  the  very  nature  of  religion 
itself.  This  is  true  whether  we  consider  religion  in  its  aspect 
of  belief,  or  of  feeling,  or  of  practice.  It  is  also  true  if  we 
consider  any  particular  religion  from  the  point  of  view  of  its 
development  and  of  the  reciprocal  reactions  between  it  and  the 
other  related  factors  of  an  advancing  race-culture.  "  Now  the 
character  of  a  religion,"  says  Tiele,'  *'  and,  therefore,  also  the 
direction  of  its  development,  depend  chiefly  upon  the  concep- 
tion which  people  form  of  their  god  or  gods,  their  conception 
of  what  the  deity  is  toward  man,  and  conversely  of  man's  re- 
lation to  the  deity,  and  of  the  relation  of  God,  and  therefore  of 
God-serving  man  also,  to  the  world  of  plienomona."  In  the 
lower,  and  even  in  the  lowest  forms  of  religious  belief,  this  in- 
timate and  influential  connection  is  manifest.  Wherever  tlie 
mysterious,  bodeful,  and  harmful  side  of  nature  is  deified,  and 
her  superhuman  powers  are  regarded  as  embodied  in  poisonous 
serpents  and  ravenous  beasts,  in  destructive  storm,  or  blight 
on  the  crops,  or  in  diseases  of  men  and  animals,  there  we  have 

»  Elements  of  tlic  Science  of  Religion,  First  Series,  p.  752. 


6  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

superstitious  and  magical  propitiatory  rites,  to  restrict  human 
life  in  its  activities  by  manifold  tabus  and  to  make  it  miserable 
with  sordid  fears.  Darkness  and  cruelty  among  men  correspond 
to  the  dark  and  cruel  conceptions  of  the  superhuman  powers 
which  are  over  man.  When,  however,  the  conception  of  these 
superhuman  powers  is  more  helpful  and  kindly,  the  beneficent 
eifect  upon  the  entire  life,  even  of  savage  or  half-civilized 
man,  through  this  channel  of  religious  belief  is  most  obvious. 
Among  peoples  who  have  attained  a  relatively  high  degree 
of  artistic  and  scientific  development,  the  same  important 
influence  from  the  conception  which  the  multitude  entertain  of 
their  gods,  or  of  their  supreme  God,  remains  in  force.  This 
might  be  illustrated  by  a  comparison  of  the  attitude  of  mind 
toward  life,  and  of  the  social  customs,  prevalent  in  Japan 
to-day,  with  those  of  the  South-Sea  Islands  or  of  portions 
of  Central  or  Southern  Africa.  In  the  former  country  the 
early  conception  of  the  gods  answering  to  the  word  Kami, 
while  not  of  a  lofty  spiritual  and  moral  character,  was  of  beings 
that  awakened  a  certain  respect,  and  kindly  sentiments  of  a 
mj^sterious  and  quasi-sesthetic^l  quality.  Our  previous  re- 
searches have  shown  how  in  nominally  Christian  lands,  great 
multitudes  of  the  people  still  cling  to  these  more  primitive 
superstitions  in  their  conception  of  the  superhuman  powers ; 
and  in  this  way  are  their  lives  profoundly  influenced. 

Special  instances  might  be  noticed  to  illustrate  the  influence 
of  the  conception  of  Divine  Being  upon  the  morals  of  sex  and 
of  eating  and  drinking ; — for  example,  the  effect  of  the  ideas 
respecting  Astarte  among  the  Phoenicians  and  Aphrodite 
among  the  Greeks ;  or  of  phallic  worship  in  "  Old  Japan  " 
and  of  the  woi'ship  of  the  lingam  in  India  to-day.  The 
"  liquor-cult "  among  the  early  Aryan  peoples  was  undoubt- 
edly more  truly  religious  and  less  degrading  morally  than  our 
modern  ideas  on  such  subjects  might  lead  us  to  suppose ;  but 
we  can  scarcely  believe  the  worship  of  the  intoxicating  juice 
of  the  Soma-plant   as  *'  wisest   in  understandirjg,"  and  as  a 


IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  CONCEPTION        7 

guide  "  along  the  straightest  pathway,"  to  have  been  devoid 
of  baleful  influence.  As  to  the  somewhat  similar  cult  of 
Bacchus  among  the  Greeks  there  is  even  less  doubt. 

The  influence  of  the  conception  of  Divine  Being  upon  all 
the  religious  and  social  life  of  any  people  is  illustrated  in  a 
notable  way  by  the  worship  of  the  greater  nature-gods, — es- 
pecially of  the  Sun.  Among  the  early  Aryans,  where  this 
luminary  was  conceived  of  as  the  deva,  or  divine  One,  the 
shining  god  par  excellence^  the  god  of  life  who  bestows  chil- 
dren, "  the  active  force,  the  power  that  wakens,  arouses,  en- 
livens," and  the  giver  of  all  good  things  to  mortals  and  to 
gods,  sun-worship  contributed  a  variety  of  uplifting  spiritual 
impulses  to  the  entire  life  of  the  people.  Thus  he  is  prayed 
to  as  a  purifying  force  :  "  Do  thou  from  that  (viz.,  foolishness 
and  human  insolence),  O  Savitar,  make  us  here  sinless."  So 
in  Egypt,  the  sun,  deified  as  the  god  of  light,  became  a  sym- 
bol, and  to  a  certain  extent  a  source,  of  moral  illumination 
and  purifying.  Among  the  unreflecting  but  warlike  and  cruel 
Aztecs,  however,  the  worship  of  the  sun,  regarded  as  lord  of 
life  and  death,  bore  quite  different  fruitage.  It  was  to  their 
sacrifices  to  the  sun  that  they  attributed  their  successes  in  war 
and  the  prosperity  of  the  empire.  Never  did  the  "  imperialis- 
tic "  conception  of  the  Supreme  Being  among  a  warlike  and 
cruel  race  l>ear  witness  more  unmistakably  to  its  own  potently 
bad  influence  over  social  and  political  affairs.  They  "  pushed 
the  superstitious  practice  of  human  sacrifice  to  absolute 
frenzy."  In  ''  the  abode  "  of  this  god  the  Spaniards  could 
count  13f),000  symmetrically  piled  skulls  of  the  victims  sac- 
rificed since  the  founding  of  the  sanctuary.  But  even  this 
number  is  small  compared  with  that  which  might  be  counted 
on  tlie  battle  fields  on  which  have  fallen  the  victims  of  tlie 
conception  of  Jehovah,  or  of  the  Christian  (}od,  as  the  relent- 
less "  (iod  of  Battles." 

The  important  influence  over  all  the  social  and  political  life 
of  the  people,  both  for  good  and  for  evil,  which  flows  from  the 


8  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

more  elaborate  forms  of  ancestor-worship  in  China  and  Japan 
has  already  been  sufficiently  illustrated.^  The  conservative 
power  over  the  Chinese  which  their  conception  of  Divine  Be- 
ing has  exercised  is  almost  incalculable. 

The  scope  and  strength  of  the  relation  between  the  concep- 
tion of  the  gods,  or  of  God,  and  all  the  other  tenets  of  religious 
belief  and  the  practices  of  religious  life,  as  well  as  the  influence 
of  the  same  conception  upon  every  important  factor  in  race- 
culture,  increases  with  the  height  in  the  scale  of  development 
reached  by  any  particular  religion.  The  whole  religious,  so- 
cial, and  political  history  of  Israel  has  justly  been  declared  to 
be  "  virtually  a  development  in  the  idea  of  God."  Where,  as  in 
Buddhism  and  in  much  of  Hinduism,  this  idea  is  characterized 
by  vagueness  and  mysticism,  such  as  are  descriptive  of  the 
Oriental  temperament  and  habit  of  meditative  thinking,  its 
very  negative  character,  when  considered  from  the  logical 
point  of  view,  becomes  a  powerful  and  positive  influence  over 
the  opinions  and  practices  of  the  people.  It  would  be  difficult 
better  to  describe  all  this  for  one  who  can  read  between  the 
lines  than  to  reflect  upon  the  declaration  attributed  to  him  who 
became  "  enlightened."  "  There  is,  O  disciples,  something  not 
born,  not  originated,  not  made,  not  formed.  If,  O  disciples, 
there  were  not  this  not-born,  not-originated,  not-made,  not- 
formed,  there  would  be  no  escape  from  the  born,  the  originated, 
the  formed,  the  made."     (In  the  Udana,  viii,  3.) 

Above  all  in  Christianity  it  is  the  positive  content  of  its  con- 
ception of  personal  life  as  applied  to  God,  and  of  personal  re- 
lations as  existing  between  man  and  God,  which  chiefly  deter- 
mines its  superiority  over  all  other  religions.  This  is  true, 
as  respects  both  the  satisfactions  which  it  affords  to  the  intellect 
and  to  the  sentiments,  and  also  as  respects  the  influence  which 
it  exerts  over  the  social  and  political  institutions  and  life  of 
the  people.  We  have  already  seen  (Vol.  I,  pp.  205^.)  how  this 
conception  arose  and  developed.     It  derived  from  that  branch 

iVol.  I,  pp.  403^. 


importa:sXe  of  the  conception  9 

of  Semitic  religions  which  Judaism  produced,  the  conception 
of  Divine  Being  as  the  fount  and  guardian  of  righteousness. 
It  owes  to  the  personal  experience  and  unique  religious  insight 
of  Jesus  that  modification  of  its  contents,  as  they  had  ripened 
and  matured  in  the  later  Judaism,  which  brought  it  near  to  the 
affections  of  the  human  heart  and  immensely  increased  its 
comforting  and  purifjdng  power.  But  it  also  derived  from 
Greek  reflective  thinking  certain  elements  which  increased  its 
potency  and  charm  as  a  stimulus  to  the  imagination  and  a  su- 
preme satisfaction  to  man's  aspirations  after  the  highest  truths 
v/ithin  the  grasp  of  his  rational  activities.  Where  it  has  been 
most  free  from  those  superstitious  elements  that  emerge  out  of 
the  darkness  of  primitive  times  and  linger  in  the  beliefs,  sen- 
timents, and  practices,  even  of  Christian  communities,  and 
from  those  defects  of  the  Judaistic  conception  which  reli^nous 
experience  has  hitherto  not  quite  succeeded  in  displacing,  this 
conception  of  God  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  has  been  a  meas- 
ureless influence  for  good  to  the  modern  world. 

In  subsequent  chapters  it  will  be  made  clear  how  the  con- 
ception of  God  logically  and  practically  determines  one's  atti- 
tude toward  all  the  other  principal  problems  of  the  philosophy 
of  religion.  Its  reciprocal  relations  with  the  problem  of  evil 
are  obvious  at  once  and  from  the  very  nature  of  this  problem. 
Without  attaining  the  knowledge  or  rational  faith  in  the  per- 
fect divine  wisdom  and  goodness,  the  problem  of  evil  admits  of 
no  hopeful  answer,  not  to  say  satisfactory  solution.  But,  on 
the  other  liand,  this  very  problem,  wlien  considered  from  the 
historical  and  ^^/asi-scientific  points  of  view,  is  the  most  dilVi- 
cult  olwtacle  in  the  path  to  such  a  faith.  Hence  it  comes  about 
that  all  human  conceptions  of  what  is  really  good  and  really 
evil,  of  the  forces  and  laws  which  the  ethical  evolution  of  the 
nice  exhibits,  of  the  goal  of  this  evolution,  and  of  the  priKspt'ct 
of  reacliing  this  goal,  are  interdependently  related  to  the  con- 
ception of  God.  All  problems  of  good  and  evil — every  kind 
of  good  and  every  kind  of  evil — are  influenced  jui  respects  lH)th 


10  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  method  employed  and  the  conclusions  reached  in  their  at- 
tempted solution,  by  our  beliefs  regarding  the  nature  of  that 
Being  of  the  World,  which  religious  faith  calls  God. 

The  same  important  relation  exists,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
to  influence  all  such  contentions  of  science  and  religion  as  are 
raised  over  "  nature  "  and  "  the  supernatural,"  law  and  miracle, 
order  and  so-called  ''  intervention ;  "  and  to  decide  all  such  in- 
quiries as  concern  themselves  with  revelation,  inspiration,  and 
sacred  scripture,  in  view  of  the  conceptions  which  the  contestants 
entertain  as  to  the  Divine  predicates  and  attributes.  For  these 
predicates  and  attributes  are  little  else  than  religion's  way  of 
conceiving  of  the  dependence  of  the  physical  universe  and  of  the 
history  of  the  race  upon  the  Divine  Being.  What  God  is,  must 
be  judged  by  what  God  seems  to  be  doing  in  the  universe  of 
things  and  minds.  And  what  the  rational  procedure  in  such 
questions  can  conceive  of  him  as  doing,  depends  much  upon 
the  conception  already  formed  as  to  his  Being,  when  the  ques- 
tions themselves  are  first  approached.  All  this,  to  be  sure,  in- 
volves a  certain  logical  circle  in  conception  and  in  argument. 
But  it  is  only  the  same  kind  of  an  apparent  circle  as  describes 
the  form  of  all  human  advances  in  knowledge.  It  is  the  ap- 
parent return  upon  itself  of  the  uprising  spiral  curve. 

The  importance  of  the  conception  of  God,  in  its  influence 
upon  all  religious  thought  and  religious  life,  and  even  upon 
the  social  and  philosophical  development  of  the  race,  will  also 
appear  in  a  somewhat  startling  way  when  we  come  to  say 
the  few  words  which  can  safely  be  said  upon  the  problems  of 
the  immortality  of  the  individual  and  the  destiny  of  the  race. 
The  Universal  Life  can  never  be  conceived  of  in  any  particular 
way  without  carrying  along  with  the  process  not  a  few  as- 
sumptions and  factors  which  determine  the  tenets  to  which 
our  rational  thinking  must  hold  respecting  the  nature  and 
final  purpose  of  human  life.  Neither  the  descriptive  history  of 
the  past,  nor  any  deductive  theory  from  the  conceptions  which 
such  a  history  supports,  can  afford  a  wholly  satisfactory  basis 


IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  CONCEPTION  11 

for  that  hope  and  faith  which  the  religious  nature  of  man 
craves  and  even  demands.  As  a  man  conceives  of  God,  the 
Fountain  and  Author  of  Life,  so  will  he  believe,  with  more  or 
less  assurance  of  conviction,  respecting  the  life  hereafter  of 
the  individual  and  of  the  race. 

But  tlie  importance  of  forming  a  rational  and  defensible 
conception  of  God  is  even  greater  and  more  obvious  for  the 
philosophy  of  religion  than  for  the  religious  life  and  religious 
development  of  man,  so  far  as  these  can  be  considered  inde- 
pendently of  philosophy.  It  is  the  unifying  and  systematizing 
instinct  and  practice  of  the  reason  which  makes  itself  felt  here. 
It  is,  indeed,  a  mistaken  and  narrowing  view  of  the  philosophy  of 
religion  which  defines  it  as  the  investigation  of  the  foundations 
of  the  conception  of  Deity  "  in  the  principles  of  belief  as  aj>- 
plied  to  the  data  produced  by  science  and  philosophy."  ^  Nor 
is  any  complete  identification  of  the  philosophy  of  religion  with 
Theism  and  with  the  critical  examination  of  anti-theistic  theories 
satisfactory.  Yet  this  tendency  to  concentrate  reflection  and 
speculation  upon  the  treatment  of  the  problem  of  the  Divine 
Being,  as  tliis  problem  appears  in  the  light  of  modern  evolu- 
tionar}'  science  and  agnostic  or  positivistic  philosophy,  is  sig- 
nificant of  an  important  trutli.  It  is,  indeed,  impossible  to  de- 
termine the  true  conception  of  God  by  the  critical  and  specu- 
lative processes  of  philosophy,  in  independence  of  the  facts  and 
laws  of  man's  religious  development.  Emphatically  true  is  it 
— to  repeat  the  conclusions  of  our  study  of  the  phenomena — 
that  no  man  can  separate  himself  from  tlie  race  in  his  opinions 
and  sentiments  touching  tlie  Divine  Being  and  the  Divine  rela- 
tions to  the  world  of  finite  things  and  minds.  To  attempt  this 
in  the  name  of  reji.st)n  is  to  commit  reason  to  an  effort  whii^li  is, 
historically  and  psychologically  considered,  impossible  and  al>- 
surd. 

The  central  problem  of  the  philosophy  of  religion  is  afforded 
by  the  conception  of  Go<l.     Tlie  question    in   deUite   between 

>  So  Caldecott,  The  ThiloMophy  of  lleligion,  p.  3. 


12  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Theism  so-called  and  the  anti-theistic  tlieories  is  the  most  im- 
portant which  the  reflective  powers  of  man  can  undertake  to 
answer.  And  the  answer  given  to  this  question  is  the  more 
influential  in  determining  the  answers  given  to  all  the  other 
problems  with  which  the  philosophy  of  religion  attempts  to 
deal,  the  more  systematic  and  thorough  such  attempts  become. 
It  is,  indeed,  impossible  to  develop  a  system  of  religious  phi- 
losophy which  shall  arrange  its  theorems  after  the  manner  of 
the  "  Ethics  "  of  Spinoza,  or  which  shall  successfully  employ  in 
the  solution  of  its  problems  the  methodolog}^  of  geometry. 
But  every  theorem  in  any  system  of  theology  or  of  religious 
faith  is  influenced  by  the  assumptions  and  tenets  displayed 
or  concealed  in  its  handling  of  the  theistic  problem. 

The  truth  of  this  statement  reaches  its  greatest  intensity  of 
expression  when  we  come  to  consider,  in  the  light  of  modern 
science  and  philosophy,  the  possibility  of  uniting  such  concep- 
tions as  those  subsumed  under  the  terms  "  Absolute,"  "  Infi- 
nite," etc.,  with  the  conceptions  described  in  the  familiar  lan- 
guage of  the  domestic  affections  and  of  the  popular  beliefs  and 
sentiments  on  matters  of  ethics.  The  study  of  the  phenome- 
nology of  religion  has  placed  before  us  as  our  most  important 
problem  the  conception  of  the  Being  of  the  World  as  perfect 
Ethical  Spirit.  But  agnosticism  contends  that  no  knowledge,  or 
even  rational  faith,  is  possible  regarding  that  Ultimate  Reality, 
or  Infinite  and  Absolute  Being,  about  which  philosophy  has 
been  accustomed,  somewhat  over-confidently  and  with  excess 
of  details,  to  discourse.  And  if  we  dismiss — as  we  have  agreed 
to  do — this  extreme  position  of  agnosticism,  as  belonging  to 
epistemology  and  to  general  metaphysics,  we  cannot  so  easily  es- 
cape in  this  connection  the  next  attack  from  the  agnostic  posi- 
tion. For  when  we  ask  ourselves  the  question  which  Professor 
Howison  has  put  in  this  form  :  "  Does  a  Supreme  Being,  or  Ul- 
timate Reality,  no  matter  how  assuredly  proved,  deserve  the 
name  of  *  God '  simply  by  virtue  of  its  Reality  and  Supremacy  ?  " 
we  are  obliged  to  give  a  prompt  and  negative  answer  to  this 


IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  CONCEPTION       13 

question.  Certainly,  No :  if  under  the  title,  "  God,"  it  is 
proposed  to  cover  a  conception  that  shall  meet  the  intellectual, 
emotional,  and  practical  needs  which  all  religion  expresses  to 
some  degree,  and  which  every  so-called  "  universal "  or 
"  greater  "  religion  must  measurably,  at  least,  be  able  to  satisfy. 
The  conception  of  God^  which  the  highest  development  of  the 
i.ice  has  adopted,  is  that  of  an  Absolute  or  Infinite  Being  luho 
/>>•  aho  perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  But  not  only  the  agnosticism 
which  denies  the  possibility  of  any  philosophy  of  religion,  but 
also  certain  important  schools  of  religious  philosophy,  deny  tlie 
[)Ossiblity  of  a  rational  union  between  these  two  sets,  or  classes, 
of  conceptions.  It  is  this  and  kindred  contentions,  therefore, 
which  serve  yet  more  heavily  to  weight  the  importance  for  the 
philosophy  of  religion  of  the  central  problem  of  Theism. 

Thus  it  comes  about  that  from  the  philosophical  standpoint, 
as  well  as  from  that  of  history,  the  doctrine  of  God  as  both 
Absolute  Self  and  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  furnishes  to  tlie 
philosophy  of  religion  its  most  important  and  difficult  problem. 
To  establish  the  conception  of  an  Absolute  Self,  and  the  rela- 
tions of  dependence  sustained  to  such  a  Being  by  the  world  of 
finite  Things  and  finite  Minds,  upon  the  basis  of  a  critical  sur- 
vey of  the  facts  experienced  by  the  race,  is  the  supremely 
difficult  task  of  meUiphysics.  The  approximately  successful 
accomplishment  of  this  task  includes  the  discussion  of  the  fol- 
lowing questions  :  (1)  What  is  it  to  be  a  person,  or  Self,  as  I,  the 
subject  of  religion,  am  a  person  ?  (2)  What  is  it  to  be  a  pei-son, 
or  Self,  lus  God  the  Object  of  religious  faith  and  woi-sliip  must 
be  conceived  of  as  personal  ?  and  (3)  What  are  the  most  essen- 
tial relations,  conceivable  and  defensible  in  a  rational  wav, 
between  me  the  dependent  and  fuiite  Self  and  God  the  Absi>- 
lute  Self?  Tliese  questions  emlKxly  and  give  form  to  the 
very  problems  wliicli  tlie  historical  and  psychological  survey  of 
tlu'  phenomena  of  man's  religions  life  and  development  has 
forced  upon  our  attention,  liut  the  trutli  in  answer  to  them 
is  not  of  such  a  nature  that  either  history  or  psychology  can 


14  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

either  establish  or  refute  it.  And  until  we  grapple  with  the 
logical  consistency  and  ontological  value  of  the  conception  of 
God  as  Absolute  Self  our  studies  of  the  religious  experience  of 
the  race  seem  to  lead  us  farther  and  farther  away  from  any 
ultimate  and  systematic  views  on  the  entire  subject  of  religion. 
The  more  we  dig  into  the  history  and  the  psychology  of  man's 
religious  development,  the  more  heterogeneous  does  the  ma- 
terial thrown  out  by  pickax  and  spade  appear  to  be ;  and  the 
more  imperative  becomes  the  demand  for  some  kind  of  critical 
testing,  which  shall  separate  the  refuse  from  the  rich  ore  and 
fuse  the  ore  into  some  worshipful  image  of  Reality.  It  is  "  the 
truth  or  untruth  of  the  Whole "  which  our  rational  nature 
seeks  to  know.^  Unless  the  religious  experience  of  the  race 
leads  on  in  a  helpful  way  toward  the  apprehension  of  the  ulti- 
mate truth  of  religion,  the  investigation  of  the  details  is  of 
comparatively  small  importance.  In  this  respect  the  science  of 
religion  is  not  like  the  other  particular  sciences ;  if,  indeed,  it 
is  to  be  given  any  place  among  them.  It  is  the  knowledge  of,  or 
rational  faith  in,  the  Reality  which  answers  to  the  central  con- 
ception of  religion, — the  conception,  namely,  of  God  as  Abso- 
lute Self  and  perfect  Ethical  Spirit — which  sets  the  goal  of 
scientific  endeavor.  And  here  we  are  reminded  of  the  truth 
of  what  Leibnitz  affirmed  :  "  It  is  at  once  the  easiest  and  hard- 
est thing  to  become  acquainted  with  God  in  this  way  ;  the  first 
and  easiest  in  the  way  of  the  light,  the  hardest  and  last  in  the 
way  of  the  shadow." 

The  practical  importance  of  the  conception  of  God  in  the 
beginning  of  the  individual's  religious  experience  may  be  indi- 
cated by  the  statistics  collected  by  a  recent  writer  on  the 
subject.  Starbuck'-^  found  that  from  ninety  to  ninety-four  per 
cent,  of  the  persons  who  reported  to  him  regarded  a  belief  in 
God  as  the  central  thing  in  their  religious  experience.  Next 
in  importance  among  the  positive  beliefs  of  religion,  as  tested 

1  Compare  Eucken,  Der  Wahrheitsgehalt  der  Religion,  p.  8. 

2  The  Psychology  of  Religion,  Table  on  p.  320. 


IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  CONCEPTION       15 

by  this  somewhat  shifty  and  uncertain  but  suggestive  method, 
stood  the  belief  in  immortality.  "  The  belief  in  God,"  says 
he,  "  in  some  form  is  by  far  the  most  central  conception,  and 
grows  in  importance  as  years  advance.  .  .  .  There  is  advance 
likewise  in  the  quality  of  the  belief.  .  .  .  These  younger  per- 
sons are  often  found  in  the  process  of  awakening  to  the 
significance  of  the  idea  of  God.  .  .  .  Belief  in  God  as  a  larger 
unnamed  Force  or  Spirit,  or  as  a  Power  that  works  for  right- 
eousness, while  common  among  the  older  persons,  is  almost 
never  given  by  the  younger."  These  testimonies  express  the 
similarity  between  the  stages  of  intellectual  development  as 
characterized  by  this  central  conception  of  religion,  in  the 
individual  and  in  the  race. 

That  attitude  of  mind  appropriate  to  the  metaphysics  of  re- 
ligion, or  the  speculative  discussion  of  the  conception  of  God, 
which  properly  follows  from  the  importance  of  the  subject,  has 
to  contend  acrainst  a  number  of  current  tendencies  of  thoutrht 
and  feeling.  These  tendencies  may  be  somewhat  roughly 
classified  under  the  three  heads  of  Indifferentism,  Syncretism, 
Agnosticism.  Neither  of  these  tendencies  is,  however,  either 
rational  or  morally  justifiable  in  view  of  the  immense  impor- 
tance of  the  questions  raised  by  the  speculative  discussion  of 
the  conception  of  Divine  Being.  Indifference  to  this  concep- 
tion is  not  only  the  very  essence  of  irreligion,  but  it  is  also 
subject  to  the  charge  of  being  an  intellectually  unwortliy  and 
morally  wrong  attitude  of  mind,  hy  whatever  name  we  call 
the  product  of  man's  attempt  to  grasp  and  \u)\d  togetlier  in  one 
conception  his  most  fundamental  and  ultimate  convictions  and 
knowledge  respecting  the  Being  of  tlie  World,  not  to  have  an 
interest  in  this  conception  is  an  irrational  attitude  of  mind. 
Granting  all  that  can  1x3  said  as  to  tlio  diniculty  of  the  i)rocess, 
and  as  to  the  vague  and  unrrrtain  character  of  tlu»  product, 
this  supn^me  effort  of  human  n'asoii  to  comprehend  tlie  Whole, 
and  to  view  and  interpret  the  parti(;ulai>>  in  tlie  light  of  tlie 
comprehension  of  tlie   Whole,  can  never  be  deprived  of  the 


16  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

right  to  charm  the  mind  and  to  command  its  supreme  en- 
deavor. 

By  Syncretism  in  this  connection  I  mean  that  attitude  of 
mind  which  so  frequently  follows  the  first  discovery  of  the 
great  variety  of  views  with  regard  to  the  true  and  valid  con- 
ception of  God,  and  of  the  undoubted  general  fact  of  an  evolu- 
tionary process  as  characterizing  and  conditioning  this  concep- 
tion in  all  the  places  and  periods  of  human  history.  A  certain 
confusion  of  thought,  and  a  time  of  hesitation  and  doubt  is 
almost  certain  to  follow  this  discovery.  Such  a  result  is  not 
necessarily  discreditable  to  any  inquirer.  But  when  "poly- 
theism, monism,  and  pantheism  are  supposed  to  cancel  each 
other,  leaving  the  enlightened  mind  with  no  belief  in  God," 
the  mental  attitude  of  syncretism  may  become  the  opposite  of 
reasonable.  In  every  form  of  progress  in  race-culture  essentially 
the  same  experience  prevails.  The  phenomena  are  manifold, 
complex,  apparently  self-contradictory.  The  truths  which  they 
substantiate  cannot  be  discovered  by  approaching  them  with  a 
tendency  to  this  kind  of  syncretism.  Reality  is,  indeed,  no 
patently  logical  system  which  appears  as  such  to  the  first  ob- 
servations of  the  chance  observer.  The  rather  is  it  always,  at 
first  sight,  and  even  more  at  second  and  third  sight,  an  infinitely 
varied  play  of  struggling  existences,  contending  forces,  and 
diverse  and  mysterious  modes  of  behavior. 

To  conclude  off-hand  that  one  religion  is  as  good  and  true 
and  worthy  of  a  man's  acceptance  and  adherence  as  another, 
that  all  alike  are  coins  of  an  equally  genuine  ring  and  of  quite 
completely  interchangeable  values,  is  to  dismiss  altogether  too 
summarily  the  obligation  of  human  reason  to  prolonged  and 
searching  criticism  as  a  basis  for  its  fundamental  beliefs.  The 
conceptions  of  science  and  of  philosophy  respecting  the  Being 
of  the  World  have  in  the  past  exhibited  no  less  baffling  variety 
and  patent  inconsistencies  than  have  the  conceptions  of  reli- 
gion. The  very  metaphysical  categories  under  which  they 
subsume  the  phenomena  are  scarcely  less  vague  and  indefinite 


IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  CONCEPTION       17 

than  are  those  with  which  the  religious  experience  is  accus- 
tomed to  consort.  Indeed,  the  categories  which  necessarily 
claim  validity  in  any  Theory  of  Reality,  whether  its  peculiar 
point  of  departure  be  derived  from  science,  from  philosophy, 
or  from  religion,  are  substantially  the  same.  Being  and  at- 
tribute, force  and  causation,  law  and  order,  number  and  quan- 
tity, etc.,  when  applied  to  finite  things  and  finite  minds,  or  to 
the  so-called  infinite  and  absolute  God,  are,  after  all,  essenti- 
ally considered,  equally  anthropomorphic,  equally  valid  or  in- 
valid ontologically.  And  this  sort  of  loose  syncretism  is  no 
more,  but  rather  less,  justifiable  in  religion  than  in  either  sci- 
ence or  philosophy. 

There  is  indeed  truth  in  all  religions  ;  because  all  religions  are 
essentially,  and  by  tlieir  very  nature,  the  expression  in  man's  de- 
veloping life,  of  an  eternal  and  unchanging  truth.  But  it  be- 
longs to  the  growing  faculty  of  the  race  to  criticise  and  synthe- 
size, and  to  appreciate  better  the  values,  of  its  own  experience  ; 
and  thus  more  and  more  clearly  and  comprehensively  to  appre- 
hend what  that  truth  is.  This  is  the  express  task  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  religion. 

The  attitude  of  mind  toward  the  discussion  of  the  ontologi- 
cal  nature  and  value  of  that  conception  of  God  which  man's 
obligations  to  his  own  rational  nature  seem  to  command,  is,  in 
the  third  place,  opposed  to  several  of  tlie  many  forms  of  Ag- 
nosticism. Undoubtedly  at  the  present  time  it  is  agnosticism, 
rather  than  any  form  of  so-called  false  religion  or  any  school 
of  religious  pliilosophy,  from  wl)ich  come  the  principal  ol>- 
stacles  to  a  rational  belief  in  God.  In  its  extremer  form  the 
agnostic  attitude  will  not  admit  even  the  propriety  or  the  liope- 
fuhiess  of  any  effort  of  liuman  reason  to  attain  such  a  be- 
lief. 

That  the  human  mind  refuses  to  remain  quiet  in  the  agnostic 
attitude  toward  the  conception  of  God,  the  history  of  religion 
shows  most  convincingly.  According  to  the  earlier  doctrine  of 
the  Upanishads,  Atman  is  the  Alone  Reality  and  is  forever  and 

2 


18  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

wholly  uncognizable  by  man.  But  as  Deussen^  well  says,  the 
investigating  human  spirit  refuses  to  stop  with  this.  And 
Hinduism,  "  in  spite  of  the  unknowableness  of  Atman  pro- 
ceeded to  treat  of  Atman  as  an  Object  of  cognition  ;  in  spite 
of  the  non-reality  of  the  World  outside  of  Atman  it  proceeded 
to  busy  itself  with  the  world  as  '  a  real.'  "  The  same  truth  was 
illustrated  by  the  earlier  history  of  Buddhism.  Its  original 
agnosticism  was,  indeed,  rather  negative  than  positive  ;  it  was 
practical  rather  than  dogmatic.  Of  philosophy  about  the  Di- 
vine Being  there  was  then  in  existence  enough  and  to  spare ; 
but  the  people  were  miserable  and  perishing  because  they  knew 
not  "  the  Way."  The  new  voice  said  to  them  all :  *'  It  belongs 
to  you  of  yourselves,  and  not  through  the  medium  of  priestly 
intervention  or  of  schools  of  metaphysics,  to  attain  the  desired 
good.  The  knowledge  most  necessary  for  this  does  not  con- 
cern the  hidden  nature  of  the  gods,  or  indeed  whether  the  gods 
of  Hinduism  exist  in  reality  or  not ;  it  concerns  the  way  to 
live,  the  way  of  salvation." 

This  attitude  of  the  practical  religious  teacher  toward  the 
ontology  of  religious  faith  and  religious  philosophy  has  a  cer- 
tain warrant  in  the  necessities  of  the  religious  life.  To  wait 
for  the  full  assurance  of  a  reasoned  metaphysics  before  enter- 
ing upon  the  path  of  salvation  would  be  for  the  great  multi- 
tude of  the  people,  and  indeed  for  every  man  of  a  most  reflec- 
tive turn,  to  postpone  indefinitely  the  most  pressing  concerns 
of  religion.  Yet  more  is  true.  A  certain  large  measure  of 
agnosticism  is,  historically  and  speculatively  considered,  the 
critic,  the  foil,  and  the  cure,  of  a  demonstrative  and  mathemat- 
ical theology.  The  metaphysics  of  the  Divine  Being  must 
grow  out  of  human  experience  historically  and  reflectively 
interpreted.  But  Buddhism  itself  soon  constructed  a  positive 
doctrine  of  the  gods ;  and  it  afterward  gave  birth  to  various 
schools  of  religious  philosophy.  There  are  few  more  interest- 
ing studies  in  the  evolution  of  religious  opinions  than  that  af- 

1  Allgemeine  Geschichte  der  Philosophie,  I,  ii,  p.  213. 


IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  CONCEPTIOX.  19 

forded  by  the  wonderful  process  by  which  this  agnostic  reli- 
gion— especially  the  Northern  Buddhism — proceeded  upon  the 
view  of  Voltaire :  '*  If  we  had  no  God,  it  would  be  necessary 
to  create  one." 

A  certain  agnostic  attitude  toward  any  attempt  to  unite  the 
conception  of  an  Absolute  Self  with  the  conception  of  perfect 
Ethical  Spirit  is,  undoubtedly,  appropriate  to  the  difficulties 
inherent  in  the  very  nature  of  tlie  attempt.  It  is  so  easy  to 
juggle  witli  words  when  reflecting  upon  such  subjects.  It  is 
80  difficult  to  avoid  mistakhig  the  glitter  of  superficial  but  hol- 
low abstractions  for  great  and  sublime  ideas  that  have  been 
derived  from  a  full  and  rich  storehouse  of  human  experience. 
It  is  well  not  to  affirm  certain  knowledge  when  only  a  some- 
what hesitating  faith  is  appropriate  ; — and  this,  without  accept- 
ing tlie  validity  of  the  Kantian  effort  to  remove  knowledge  in 
order  to  make  room  for  faith.  If  by  '*  agnosticism  "  be  meant 
a  somewhat  extreme  caution  about  drawing  hard  and  fixed  lines 
around  the  conception  of  God,  or  about  venturing  to  affirm  that 
human  distinctions  and  qualifications,  negative  or  affirmative, 
wholly  avail  to  define,  much  more  make  comprehensible,  its  con- 
tent; then  every  student  of  the  philosophy  of  religion  may 
properly  cultivate  no  small  measure  of  the  agnostic  attitude. 

Such  a  reasonable  agnosticism,  which  wishes  to  adjust  the 
certitude  of  one's  mental  attitude  toward  the  object,  to  the 
agreement  and  clearness  of  the  various  lines  of  evidence,  is  a 
quite  different  affair  from  much  wliich  goes  by  this  name. 
There  are,  however,  two  kinds  of  the  agnostic  attitude  towanl 
the  conception  of  God  which  deserve  especially  to  bo  avoided. 
Of  these  one  is  tliat  dogmatic  agnosticism  wliich  we  liave  al- 
ready twice  or  thrice  rejected,  and  wliicli  is  taught  by  those  of 
whom  Schurman  dechirrs  :  ' '*The  burden  of  their  mossaire  is 
always  tlie  incapacity  of  the  human  mind  to  know  anything 
but  the  phenomena  of  the  sensible  world,  or  the  contradictions 
in    which    it    is  involved  when  it  essays  to  reach  Infinite  and 

'  Agnoaticieni  unci  Religion,  p.  SG. 


20  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Absolute  Reality."  Such  dogmatic  agnosticism,  when  con- 
fined chiefly  to  questions  of  ethics  and  religion,  and  when 
coupled — as  it  often  is — with  an  uncritical  credulity  toward 
the  current  metaphysics  of  the  physical  and  natural  sciences,  is 
the  very  opposite  of  a  legitimate  attitude  of  mind.  Legitimate 
agnosticism="  Removal  of  prejudice,  intellectual  honesty, 
judicial  temperament." 

Yet  more  disturbing  and  irrational  was  the  agnosticism  which 
resulted  from  the  attempt,  by  Sir  William  Hamilton  and  Dean 
Mansel,  to  unite  the  most  negative  results  of  the  Kantian 
Critique  with  the  orthodox}^  of  the  Church  of  England. 
Fortunately  on  the  whole  for  the  philosophy  of  religion  this 
attempt  soon  spent  itself. 

It  is  a  current  opinion  that  modern  science,  historical  criti- 
cism, and  critical  philosophy,  have  placed  the  assumptions  of 
the  extreme  form  of  dogmatic  agnosticism  toward  the  concep- 
tion of  God  upon  unassailable  foundations.  It  is  true  that  the 
recent  advances  in  scientific  discovery  and  reflective  thinking 
have  made  certain  forms  of  this  conception  quite  untenable. 
But  it  is  also  true  that  the  same  science,  historical  criticism, 
and  philosophy,  have  enormously  widened  our  acquaintance 
with  every  sphere  of  reality,  and  thus  have  provided  new  ma- 
terials for  the  thought  of  the  race  to  combine  in  so  incompar- 
able and  incomparably  grand  a  conception.  The  lesson  of  the 
hour  is  not  that  we  should  despair  of  framing  any  valid  idea 
of  the  Being  of  the  World  in  a  way  to  satisfy  the  religious  as 
well  as  the  scientific  and  philosophical  needs  of  humanity.  The 
lesson  is,  the  rather,  that  we  should  so  heighten,  deepen, 
broaden,  and  enrich  this  conception,  by  use  of  all  the  available 
material,  that  it  shall  more  adequately  than  ever  correspond  to 
these  magnified  needs.  For  tlie  relation  which  is  sustained  by 
the  way  in  which  the  race  conceives  of  God  to  the  entire  de- 
velopment of  the  race,  and  especially  to  the  solution  of  the  prob- 
lems proposed  to  philosophy  by  the  religious  experience  of  man- 
kind, is  an  essentially  unchanging  relation. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

NATURE  OF  THE  EVIDENCE 

In  preparation  for  the  critical  and  reflective  examination  of 
the  central  conception  of  religion  it  is  not  simply  desirable  to 
estimate  adequately  the  importance  of  the  task ;  it  is  also 
necessary  to  comprehend,  at  least  in  a  preliminary  way,  the 
nature  of  the  evidence  to  be  sought  for,  and  reasonably  to  be 
expected.  Otherwise  the  student  of  the  philosophy  of  religion 
is  liable  to  one  of  two  errors.  Either,  on  the  one  hand,  he  may 
claim  a  degree  or  kind  of  proof  for  his  conclusions  which  is 
inappropriate  to  the  subject  and  unreasonable  to  expect ;  or 
else,  on  the  other  hand,  he  may  esteem  too  lightly  the  c'lisensus 
of  evidence,  and  the  robust  tenure  of  the  composite  thread  of 
argument  which  can  be  woven  to  his  connnand.  Our  present 
inquiry  may,  then,  be  stated  in  the  following  way.  Of  what 
kind  and  degree  of  evidence — of  argument,  or  of  so-called 
*' proof  " — does  the  conception  of  God  admit? 

Any  attenq)t  to  estimate  tlie  nature  and  value  of  the  evidence 
for  the  conception  of  God  involves  an  intelligent  opinion  upon 
these  two  subjects.  In  the  first  place,  it  requires  a  correct 
view,  in  general  of  man's  mental  activities  and  products  as  rc- 
hited  to  the  different  classes  of  objects, — especially,  of  the 
nature  and  the  validity  of  knowledge,  faith,  science,  opinion, 
etc.  Hut  it  also  inv(jlves,  in  particular,  tin;  detailed  apprecia- 
tion iind  adjustment  of  the  different  lines  of  evidence  which 
converge  upon  the  Objet^t  of  religious  l)elief  and  woi-ship, — 
namely,  the  conception  of  (iod. 

The  former  of  these  two  problems  is  that  attempted  by  the 

21 


22  PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION 

psychology  and  philosophy  of  the  cognitive  processes.  The  net 
result  of  the  attempt  is  a  body  of  epistemological  doctrine  which, 
in  order  to  be  available  for  use  in  the  discussion  of  any  partic- 
ular application  of  this  doctrine,  requires  to  be  combined  with 
a  careful  observance  of  the  principles  of  logic  and  an  acquain- 
tance with  the  methodology  of  the  positive  sciences.  From  this 
body  of  doctrine  we  may  profitably  borrow  the  following  tliree 
tenets.  And,  first :  Knowledge  is  from  its  very  nature  a  mat- 
ter of  degrees,  so  to  say.  No  degree  of  knowledge  that  amounts 
to  perfectly  absolute  and  indisputable  certainty  of  the  reality 
of  its  object  can  be  reached  otherwise  than  by  self-conscious- 
ness. Even  here,  the  only  object  thus  absolutely  and  indisputa- 
bly known  is  the  "  here-and-now  "  existence  of  the  Self,  with 
its  concrete  present  object,  whether  envisaged  as  some  state  of 
the  Self  or  as  some  manifestation  of  a  not-self.  Various  theories 
of  the  intuition  or  intellectual  vision  of  God,  or  of  some  mystical 
union  of  the  finite  soul  with  the  Divine  Being,  have  attempted 
to  establish  the  knowledge  of  God  upon  this  indisputable  basis 
of  self-consciousness.  But  such  a  knowledge  of  God  could 
come  only  through  a  consciousness  of  the  Object  as  a  species 
of  Self-consciousness  ;  and  this  would  seem  to  be  intrinsically 
impossible,  both  from  the  nature  of  self-consciousness,  and  also 
from  the  nature  of  the  Object  which  is  alleged  to  be  known  in 
self-consciousness.  On  the  other  hand,  to  refuse  to  consider 
any  degree  of  the  cognitive  attitude,  any  manner  of  hioivledgey 
as  attainable  with  regard  to  the  Being  of  God,  is  to  overlook 
the  fundamental  doctrine  which  regards  the  cognitive  attitude 
itself  as  admitting  of  an  indefinite  variety  of  degrees.^ 

But,  second,  the  distinction  ordinarily  made  between  so-called 
knowledge  and  so-called  faith  is  an  unstable  and  vanishing  dis- 
tinction. Belief  that  rests  upon  no  grounds  of  knowledge,  if 
such  belief  is  possible  even  for  human  beings  of  the  lowest  in- 
tellectual  order,  certainly  is  to  be  rejected  by  the  philosophy 

1  For  a  further  discussion  of  this  subject,  see  chapter  VHI  on  "Degrees, 
Limits,  and  Kinds  of  Knowledge"  in  the  author's  Philosophy  of  Knowledge. 


NATURE  OF  THE  EVIDENCE  23 

of  religion,  as  without  evidential  value.  On  the  other  hand, 
knowledge  that  does  not  involve  large  elements  of  belief — and 
often  elements  of  belief  which  are  varied  in  character,  sub- 
tile in  origin,  and  extremely  difficult  to  estimate  with  regard  to 
their  evidential  value — is  not  to  be  had  by  human  minds, 
whether  in  the  form  of  religion,  or  science,  or  philosophy.  The 
reasons  why  the  term  *•  faith,"  rather  than  the  terra  "knowl- 
edge," is  appropriate  with  reference  to  the  verities  of  religion 
in  general,  and  especially  when  treating  of  man's  conception  of 
God,  have  already  been  made  sufficiently  clear.^ 

By  combining  the  two  preceding  conclusions  we  arrive  at  the 
following  position :  In  matters  theoretical  as  well  as  practical, 
our  attitudes  of  mind,  both  those  which  we  are  pleased  to  call 
"  knowledge  "  and  those  which  are  often  deprecated  as  only 
"faith,"  can  claim  only  a  higher  or  lower  degree  of  vrohablUty 
with  regard  to  the  real  existence  of  their  objects.  We  do  not 
increase  the  ontological  value  of  any  judgment  by  bringing  it 
under  the  category  "knowledge";  we  do  not  necessarily 
diminish  the  ontological  value  of  any  judgment  by  being  con- 
tent to  let  it  rest  under  the  rubric  "  faith."  Some  men's 
knowledges  are  by  no  means  so  rational,  or  so  certiiin,  as  other 
men's  l>eliefs.  And  much  of  the  development  of  the  particular 
sciences,  as  well  as  of  the  evolution  of  religious  faitli,  consists 
in  finding  out  that  what  was  thought  to  be  assuredly  known  is 
no  longer  worthy  even  of  belief ;  but  that  many  of  tlie  insights 
of  faith  have  turned  out  to  be  anticipations  of  future  iissured 
knowledge,  whether  of  law  or  of  fact. 

From  tliis  point  of  view  again  it  is  pertinent  to  call  attention 
to  the  kind  of  agnosticism  wiiicli  is  apj)ropriate  to  a  critical 
examination  of  the  religious  conception  of  God.  In  spite  of 
his  reasoned  agnostic  attitude  toward  tliis  conception  as  an 
object  of  knowledge,  and  of  liis  continued  adherence  to  the 
tenet  of  a  fundamental  distinction  between  the  scientific  and 
the  theological,  and  between  knowledge  and  faitii,  we  lind  Kant 

»  Vol.  I,  pp.  300//. 


24  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

referring  to  "  the  supersensible  substrate  of  all  our  faculties," 
and  to  "  the  intelligible  substrate  of  nature  both  external  and 
internal,  as  the  Reality -in-itself  (^Sache  an  sich  Selhaf).'''' ^ 
Thus,  the  other  ivay  of  getting  at  God,  through  the  postulates 
of  the  practical  reason  rather  than  through  a  demonstrative  con- 
clusion based  upon  phenomena  of  an  external  and  physical 
sort,  may  lead  to  an  attitude  as  truly  and  securely  cognitive  as 
any  that  the  fundamental  conceptions  and  postulates  of  the 
particular  sciences  can  boast.  And  Kant  himself,  if  we  may 
excuse  a  certain  almost  grotesque  mixture  of  precision  and 
squeamishness  in  his  use  of  terms,  may  be  made  to  agree  with 
a  recent  writer  in  holding :  "  Strictly,  to  be  an  Agnostic,  is  to 
be  a  heathen  "  (this  means,  I  suppose,  a  human  being  who  has 
not  as  yet  been  subject  to  the  influences  of  religious  race- 
culture);  "  and  we  are  not  heathens,  for  we  are  members  of 
Christendom."  All  of  which  favors  a  critical  and  moderate 
attitude  toward  the  evidence  for  the  Being  of  God,  rather 
than  the  attitude  of  an  already  convinced  and  dogmatic 
agnosticism.^ 

The  same  epistemological  considerations  may  fitly  guard  us 
against  another  mental  attitude  which  not  infrequently  goes 
under  the  name  of  agnosticism.  It  is  the  attitude  of  a  vague 
unreasoned  mysticism,  a  sort  of  agnostic  sentimentalism.  Be- 
cause it  is  held,  previous  to  examination,  that  the  idea  attaching 
itself  to  the  contemplation  of  the  evidence  must  always  remain 
wholly  negative  and  undefined,  both  knowledge  and  faith 
are  denied  their  rights  in  the  central  field  of  religion. 
God  as  Reality,  it  is  said,  can  neither  be  known  nor  believed 
in ;  but  a  certain  stirring  of  aesthetical  feeling  is  permissible 
even  in  the  presence  of  the  conception  of  the  "  Unknowable." 

1  See  the  Kritik  of  Judgment,  Bernard's  Translation,  pp.  238  and  240. 

2  The  ground  in  debate  between  Theism  and  dogmatic  Agnosticism  has 
been  so  thoroughly  gone  over  by  such  writers  as  Flint,  "Agnosticism," 
Fraser,  "Philosophy  of  Theism,"  Schurman,  "Belief  in  God,"  Ward,  "Nat- 
uralism and  Agnosticism,"  and  others,  as  not  to  require  further  treatment 
at  our  hands. 


NATURE  OF  THE  EVIDENCE  25 

It  is  certainly  obligatory  upon  the  philosophy  of  religion  to 
furnish  evidence  for  something  more  clearly  rational  than  this 
feeling.  The  case  is  surely  one  for  argument,  and  for  the  con- 
sideration and  balancing  of  evidence.  It  cannot  be  dismissed 
with  the  exclamation : 

"  Alas!  how  is  it  with  you 
That  you  do  bend  your  eye  on  vacancy, 
And  with  the  incorporal  air  do  hold  discourse  ?  " 

The  outcome  of  a  detailed  examination  into  the  theoretical 
and  practical  problems  in  debate  between  Theism  and  Agnosti- 
cism, ends  in  advice  similar  to  that  given  in  a  declaration  attrib- 
uted to  Confucius  :  "  When  you  know  a  thing,  to  hold  that 
you  know  it ;  and  when  you  do  not  know  a  thing,  to  allow  tliat 
you  do  not  know  it — this  is  knowledge."  Perhaps  we  might 
modify  this  advice,  as  applying  to  the  object  of  religious  belief, 
in  somewhat  the  following  way :  ''  To  have  a  rational  faitli  in 
God,  and  logically  to  proceed  from,  and  intelligently  to  hold 
by,  the  grounds  in  experience  on  which  that  faith  is  based ; 
and  when  any  form  of  belief  proves  doubtful  or  untenable  on 
such  grounds,  to  decline  or  postpone  accepting  it  as  your 
faith ; — this  is  to  have  all  the  '  knowledge  '  which  is  appropri- 
ate or  possible  with  reference  to  such  an  Object."  But  is  this 
so  very  far,  in  tlie  last  analysis,  from  what  science  and  j)hi- 
losophy  both  advise  with  reference  to  the  atUiinment  and  growth 
of  so-called  hnowledge  respecting  all  classes  of  objects?  Only 
in  this  way,  can  religion  be  made  as  scientific  and  rational  as  its 
intrinsic  nature  admits.  But  only  in  the  same  way,  can  science 
and  pliilosopliy  ])e  connnitted  to  the  cause  of  religion. 

In  attempting  to  co-ordinate  and  to  appreciate  the  different 
lines  of  evidence  leading  toward  a  rational  faith  in  Goil,  one  is 
met  l)y  several  claims  the  testing  of  which  is  in  a  large  meas- 
ure dependent  upon  one's  views  in  general,  as  to  the  nature  of 
faith  and  of  knowledge.  Among  these  claims  is  that  of  an 
infallible  intuition,  or  envisagenuMit,  of  the  reality  of  the  object. 
This  claim   may  take  either  of   two  principal   forms.     One   of 


26  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

these  is  the  more  mystical ;  the  other  the  more  argumentative, 
or  even  rat  ion  aL 

The  chiim  to  have  an  immediate  vision  of  Deity  almost  un- 
doubtedly originated  in  the  experience  of  dream-life.  It  is  this 
experience  that  gives  apparent  warrant  to  the  otherwise  quite 
untenable  theory  wliich  finds  in  dreams  the  origin  of  the  belief 
in  spirits  and  in  immortality.  In  its  most  ancient,  and  by  far 
most  frequent  form,  the  vision  is  of  some  particular  god — 
divine  animal,  deified  ancestor,  or  individual  member  of  the 
pantheon.  Such  are  the  appearances  to  believers,  in  their 
dreams,  of  Apollo,  Minerva,  Venus,  and  the  other  Greek 
divinities,  whether  as  narrated  in  the  Homeric  poems  or  in 
the  annals  of  historians.  But  it  has  been  shown  that  such  al- 
leged visions  of  the  divine  beings  imply  an  already  existing 
belief  in  the  gods.  They  may  confirm  the  belief  ;  they  do  not 
originate  it.  Undoubtedly,  however,  when  the  tendency  to 
believe  is  undeveloped,  or  the  dreamer  has  been  in  doubt,  the 
evidence  of  the  dream  may  turn  the  scale  with  him.  Thus 
men  have  come  in  all  ages  of  the  world  to  trust  the  reality  of 
their  conception  of  Divine  Being,  because  some  manifestation 
of  such  Being  has  appeared  to  them,  has  seemed  to  be  actually 
envisaged  by  them,  in  a  dream  or  in  a  vision. 

Quite  different  in  some  important  respects,  although  similar 
in  others,  is  the  intuition  of  God  which  is  claimed  by  the  doc- 
trine of  Yoga,  or  "  mental  concentration."  ^  '*  He  that  every- 
where devotes  himself  to  Him  (that  is,  Atman  as  Lord),  and 
always  lives  accordingly ;  that  by  virtue  of  Yoga  recognizes 
Him,  the  subtile  One,  shall  rejoice  in  the  top  of  heaven." 
Again :  "  He  that  devotes  himself  in  accordance  with  the  law  " 
— i.  e.,  to  avoiding  certain  vices  and  attaining  certain  virtues 
— and  "practices  Yoga,"  "he  becomes  sarvagamin,"  or  "one 
belonging  to  the  All-soul."  The  tradition  as  to  the  "  illumi- 
nation "  of  Gautama  tells  us  that  it  was  attained  by  the  means 
of  contemplation,  after  the  process  of  self-torture  and  the  Yoga- 

1  See  Hopkins,  Religions  of  India,  p.  262. 


NATURE  OF  THE  EVIDENCE  27 

discipline  had  been  found  unavailing.  In  both  these  cases, 
however,  the  envisagement  of  reality  is  reached  not  so  much 
by  way  of  a  vision,  or  any  form  of  intuition  precisely,  as  by  a 
kind  of  absorption  into  the  essence  of  Reality  itself.  The 
Yoga  doctrine  teaches  that  by  a  process,  partly  physical  and 
partly  psychical,  called  ''  mental  concentration,"  the  human  in- 
dividual may  attain  union  with  God  (jugum^yoke).  He  who 
Ijecame  "  the  Buddha,"  however,  found  out  another  equall}^  mys- 
tical path  to  a  complete  mental  satisfaction  in  the  object  sought 
by  religious  feeling.  And  both  doctrines  agree  as  to  the  possi- 
bility of  putting  the  faith  of  the  individual  upon  a  basis  of  ex- 
perience which  has  the  immediacy  and  certainty,  up  to  the  point 
of  an  infallibility,  which  belong  to  a  species  of  intuitive  cogni- 
tion. There  is,  then,  a  certain  amount  of  truth  in  the  statement 
of  Professor  Flint  :^  "  To  find  intuitionists  which  in  this  connec- 
ti(jn  really  mean  what  they  say,  we  must  go  to  Hindu  Yogi, 
Plotinus  and  the  Alexandrian  Mystics,  Schelling  and  a  few  of 
liis  followers — or  in  other  words,  to  those  who  have  thought 
of  God  as  a  pantheistic  unity  or  a  Being  without  attri- 
butes." 

It  was  chiefly  under  the  influence  of  Greek  thinking  that 
the  conception  of  God  was  itself  made  more  rational,  and  that 
tlie  way  of  verifying  this  conception  by  intuition  became  more 
of  a  rational  process.  Outside  of  Christianity  this  doctruie  of 
God  as  the  Object  of  knowledge  by  means  of  a  rational  intui- 
tion came,  perhaps,  to  its  highest  development,  as  judged  by 
ethical  and  spiritual  standards  applied  to  the  conception  itself, 
in  the;  writings  of  IMiilo  JucUeus.  As  Bousset  says:*  *'For  the 
Greek  idealistic  pliilosophy  "  (that  is,  iis  it  culminated  in  Plo- 
tinus iind  the  other  Neo-Platonists)  *' (iod  i-emained,  funda- 
mentally considered,  a  pretty  barren  aKstraction,  a  limiting 
concept,  the  Highest,  Unknowable,  and  Nameless.  For  Philo 
God  is,  and  remains,  a  highest  living  Reality."     Much  of  the 

»  Theism ,  p.  350. 

'  Die  Religion  des  Judeiiturns,  p.  420. 


28  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

best  of  the  Old-Testament  conception  had  united  with  the  best 
of  the  Greek  philosophical  thinking  in  the  conception  of  Divine 
Being  held  by  Fhilo.  "God  only  is  the  truest  and  actual 
Peace ;"  and  although  he  is  "  One  and  All,"  He  is  also  the 
"  Good  God."  Citing  Plato  in  the  Timseus,  Philo  tells  us  ^ 
that  "  the  Father  and  Maker  "  is  good.  And  do  we  inquire  of 
Philo,  "How  do  you  know  this?"  We  are  elsewhere^  in- 
formed :  *'  I  once  heard  a  yet  more  serious  story  from  my  soul, 
when  seized,  as  it  often  was,  with  a  divine  ecstasy.  ...  It 
told  me  that  in  the  One  really  existing  God  there  are  two 
supreme  and  primary  powers  (Suj/dyoeis),  Goodness  and  Might; 
and  that  by  Goodness,  he  begat  the  Universe  and  in  Might  he 
rules  that  which  hath  been  begotten."  It  is  instructive  to  no- 
tice in  this  connection  that,  without  any  claim  to  a  mystical 
intuition  or  any  toleration  for  the  method  of  ecstasy,  but  in  the 
cool  and  practical  manner  of  his  race,  the  great  Confucian 
thinker,  Shushi,  entertained  a  parallel  conception  of  the  Being 
of  the  World,  or  the  Ultimate  Reality.  But  with  the  Chinese 
philosopher  Reason  embraces  the  ethical  conception  of  good- 
ness, and  more.  The  substantial  or  more  primary  Being  of  the 
Universe  is  Reason ;  its  manifestation,  or  derived  activity,  is 
Force.  By  a  union  of  Ri  or  Reason,  and  Ki  or  Force,  the 
Universe  and  every  particular  thing  in  it  exists.  And  wher- 
ever there  is  Reason,  there  is  also  Force.  Reason  itself  is  im- 
material and  invisible ;  but  all  manifestations,  whether  of  minds 
or  of  things,  are  due  to  its  activities.  The  Ultimate  Reality 
is,  therefore,  active  Reason  ;  and  this,  of  necessity,  includes  all 
moral  principles  and  all  social  order. 

Now  nothing  is  plainer  from  the  historical  point  of  view 
than  the  contention  that  neither  the  most  successful  practicer 
of  Yoga,  nor  Gautama  who  became  the  Buddha,  nor  the  Chi- 
nese thinker  Shushi, — not  to  mention  Plotinus  and  all  his  more 
ancient  and  modern  disciples — did  in  fact  arrive  at  the  con- 

1  De  Opif.  Mundi  i,  5:   So/cet  /lot  ....  dyadbv  elvai   rhv  iraripa  koL  wotTjrrjv. 

2  De  Chenibim,  9. 


NATURE  OF  THE  EVIDENCE  29 

ceptions  they  held  (not  now  to  speak  of  the  claim  to  know  the 
extra-mental  validity  of  these  conceptions)  by  way  of  the  in- 
tuitive, or  mystical,  or  ecstatic  vision  of  God.  They  were  all 
like  us,  children  of  the  race.  The  conceptions  they  came  to 
hold  of  God  had  their  roots  in  the  historical  development  of 
humanity.  However  sudden  and  immediate  their  upspringing  in 
the  consciousness  of  the  individual  might  seem  to  be,  it  was 
the  growth  of  many  centuries  of  toilsome  reflection  upon  the 
witnesses  of  experienced  fact,  which  bore  fruit  in  the  form 
taken  by  the  conception. 

In  estimating  the  evidential  value  of  the  claims  to  a  vision 
of  God,  in  the  sense  of  an  ecstatic  or  otherwise  intuitive  knowl- 
edge, two  contrasted,  not  to  say  antithetic  truths  must  be  borne 
in  mind.  On  the  one  hand,  in  no  case  does  tliis  form  of  evi- 
dence, when  critically  examined,  turn  out  really  to  be  what  it 
claims,  or  at  first  even  seems  to  be.  The  subjective  convic- 
tion is  no  guaranty  to  others  of  the  reality  of  the  object ; — 
and  this  is  true,  all  the  way  from  the  savage  or  half-civilized 
man  who  dreams  of  the  gods  appearing  to  him  in  most  gro- 
tesque forms,  and  with  the  most  extravagant  messages,  up  to  the 
Indian  Yogin,  the  ecstatic  Philo,  the  devotional  Christian  saint. 
Let  it  be  remembered  that  the  question  at  issue  does  not  con- 
cern the  use  of  dreams,  and  visions,  and  even — or  if  you  will, 
even  especially — the  ''  mental  concentration  "  of  Yogism,  or 
the  disciplined  and  self-forgetful  contemplation  of  Huddiiism, 
as  mean8  of  revelation.  Indeed,  from  both  the  historical  and 
the  j)sychological  points  of  view,  that  the  faith  of  man  in  God 
has  been  confirmed  and  developed  in  this  way  is  matter  of  fact. 
Hut  this  experience  is  an  individual  affair.  However  convinc- 
ing it  may  Ixicome  to  the  individual,  it  can  never,  on  account 
of  its  own  intrinsic  nature  as  an  exix^rience,  be  converttnl  into 
a  universally  convincing,  nut  to  say  indisputable  kind  of  evi- 
dence. Indeed,  just  the  contrary  is  true.  This  kind  of  evi- 
dence is  inherently  such  as  is  most  diOicult  to  employ  in  de- 
fence of  any  universal  propositions  with  regard  to  the  existence 


30  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

and  nature  of  its  object.  It  is  also  most  liable  to  all  sorts  of 
impure  mixtures  and  misleading  and  harmful  elements. 

Still  further,  if  the  concrete  vision  of  God  were  always  ac- 
cepted at  the  full  value  claimed  for  it  by  the  individual  whose 
experience  it  is,  it  could  at  best  be  considered  as  only  one  par- 
ticular manifestation, — a  religious  phenomenon.  But  so  varied 
and  conflicting  are  these  manifestations  that,  unless  they  are  sub- 
jected to  a  critical  testing,  they  furnish  no  trustworthy  evi- 
dence, not  to  say  proof,  on  which  to  base  a  rational  conception 
of  the  Divine  Being.  That  the  Ultimate  Reality,  if  it  be  eth- 
ical Spirit,  might  graciously  condescend  to  bring  some  rays  of 
a  comforting  belief  about  himself  to  the  human  soul  through 
dreams  or  visions,  may  be  a  tenable  enough  view.  But  to  con- 
struct one's  conception  of  God  by  patching  together  these  frag- 
mentary and  elusive  individual  experiences  would  lead  in  quite 
the  opposite  direction  from  a  rational  procedure. 

And,  finally,  there  is  no  form  of  intuition  or  envisagement 
of  any  sort  of  finite  reality — Things  or  Minds — which  cannot 
be  subjected  to  analysis,  seen  to  be  composite,  'and  to  contain 
factors  of  more  or  less  doubtful  inference.  Immediate  cogni- 
tion of  this  sort  belongs  only  to  the  finite  and  the  particular. 
It  is  only  by  rational  procedure  that  the  mind  can  obtain  and 
validate  so  subtile,  complex,  and  changeful  a  conception  as 
is  afforded  by  the  Object  of  religious  faith. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  would  be  unfair  to  the  claims  of  re- 
ligion, and  indeed  a  violence  done  to  the  scientific  and  logical 
way  of  treating  similar  facts  in  every  sphere  of  knowledge,  to 
deny  all  evidential  value  to  those  experiences  upon  which  the 
intuitional  proof,  by  way  of  a  vision  of  God,  or  union  with 
God,  is  based.  For  here  is  certainly  a  pretty  persistent  and 
by  no  means  unimportant  phase  of  man's  religious  life  and 
development.  Even  if  this  experience  were  much  more  largely 
pathological  than  it  is,  a  certain  evidential  value  would  still  be- 
long to  it.  But  there  are  modified  forms  of  this  religious  con- 
sciousness, which  to  call  "  pathological  "  would  be  promptl}^  to 


NATURE  OF  THE  EVIDENCE  31 

go  wide  of  the  mark.  Doubtless  the  saying  of  Jesus — "  Blessed 
are  the  pure  in  heart  for  they  shall  see  God" — is  figurative 
and  cannot  be  quoted  in  support  of  the  intuitive  theory,  strictly 
interpreted.  But  the  truth  which  it  does  express  lies  deeper 
still, — too  deep  and  yet  too  high  to  be  wholly  covered  by  its 
figurative  expression.  That  the  mind's  grasp  upon  Reality — 
That  it  is,  and  What  it  is — should  be  conditioned  upon  cul- 
ture of  the  powers  employed  in  the  effort  to  grasp,  is  good 
enough  psychological  and  epistemological  doctrine  ;  and  it  is 
doctrine  of  universal  applicability.  The  experiences  which 
have  led  many  of  the  choicest  characters  of  the  race  to  be  per- 
fectly confident  of  the  reality  of  Divine  Being,  and  of  the  ac- 
tuality of  his  spiritual  immanence  in  their  own  souls,  cannot 
be  considered  devoid  of  all  evidential  value.  It  is  not  simply 
the  fanatics  or  extreme  mystics  in  Christianity  who  have  at- 
tained to  this  sort  of  a  vision  of  God.  In  the  Confessions  of 
Augustine,  as  well  as  of  Thomas  a  Kempis  or  St.  FrancLs  of 
Assisi,  and  in  the  Memoirs  of  theologians  like  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards, as  well  Jls  of  men  prominent  in  the  developments  of  the 
positive  sciences,  similar  experiences  are  not  infrequently  re- 
corded. After  his  vision  of  tlie  risen  Jesus — abnormal  and 
pathological  as  this  vision  may  have  been — the  Apostle  Paul 
expressed  the  secret  of  his  entire  life  as  a  i)erfect  confidence 
that  he,  the  man,  was  in  some  real  and  vital  way  united  with 
God  through  faith  in  Christ.  Nor  are  such  experiences  by 
any  means  confined  to  the  Christian  religion. 

That  cort;iin  experiences  should  have  a  great,  and  even  a 
supreme  evidential  value  for  thase  minds  whose  experiences 
they  are,  is  not  only  to  be  expected  as  a  fact ;  it  is  also  in 
good  measure  to  Ixi  justified  in  a  «/«^?«/-scientitic  and  philo- 
sopliical  way.  Their  nmnlx*r  and  quality,  and  the  connection 
which  they  have  liad  with  the  religious  development  of  the 
race,  are  such,  as  to  constitute  an  argument  for  the  reality  of 
the  religious  concej)tion  of  the  BtMng  of  the  World.  This 
argument  niay,  if  one  choose,  be  looked   upon  as  a  part  either 


32  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

of  the  ethical  and  ps3'chological  or  of  the  historical  proofs  of 
Theism.  "  Religious  history,"  says  Rdville,^  is  "  one  unbroken 
attestation  to  God."  All  so-called  proofs  may  be  summed  up 
in  this  :  Religion  itself  could  not  be  accounted  for  without 
God.  There  must  be  such  a  Being  of  the  World  as  will 
account  for  the  religious  life  and  development  of  humanity. 

The  claim  to  have  an  intuitive  knowledge  of  God  may  take 
yet  another  and  more  rational  form ;  it  may  become  a  theory 
affirming  what  is  known  as  a  "  God-consciousness "  in  all 
men.  If  by  tliis  be  meant  that  the  human  cognitive  conscious- 
ness has  the  power  of  making  an  immediate  seizure,  so  to  say, 
of  the  Object  God,  as  we  envisage  the  Self  in  self-consciousness, 
or  the  something  not-self  in  sense-perception,  then  the  claim  is 
psychologically  indefensible.  The  argument  against  this  view 
of  a  so-called  "  God-consciousness  "  is  substantially  the  same 
as  that  already  advanced  against  the  other  form  of  the  intui- 
tional  theory.  Neither  the  nature  of  conscious  intuition,  psy- 
chologically considered,  nor  the  nature  of  the  object  of  reli- 
gious cognition,  historically  and  analytically  considered,  would 
seem  to  admit  of  such  a  theory. 

There  is  much  important  truth,  however,  in  the  evidence 
for  the  Being  of  God  which  is  customarily  offered  by  the  ad- 
vocates of  this  view.  What  we  do  really  find  in  the  religious 
consciousness  of  the  race  is  a  spontaneous  interpretation  of 
experience  both  internal  and  external,  both  of  things  and  of 
selves,  as  due  to  other  spiritual  existences ; — with  its  accom- 
paniment of  confidence  in  the  ontological  value  of  the  inter- 
pretation. This  process  is,  indeed,  the  ever-developing  source 
of  the  knowledge  of  God.  Thus  the  One  Other-Self  comes  to 
be  believed  in,  or  mediately  known,  as  implicated  in  all  our 
conscious  cognitive  acts.  And  it  becomes  the  duty  of  a  crit- 
ical philosophy  of  religion  to  explicate  and  to  estimate  the 
value  of  that  evidence  for  the  Being  of  God  which  is,  indeed, 
implicate  in  the  very  nature  and  working  of  the  cognitive  con- 

1  The  Native  Religions  of  Mexico  and  Peru  (Hibbert  Lectures,  1884),  p.  6. 


NATURE  OF  THE  EVIDENCE  33 

sciousness  of  humanity,  and  of  its  progress  in  knowledge  of 
every  kind. 

By  an  easy  and  almost  inevitable  transition  the  claim  to  have 
an  intuitive  knowledge  of  the  reality  and  attributes  of  Divine 
Being  passes  over  into  the  claim  to  have  demonstrative,  or 
what  Kant  called  ''  apodeictic,"  proof  on  these  matters.  It 
has  for  centuries  been  the  ideal  of  philosophy  and  theology. 
by  a  process  of  reasoning  which  shall  start  from  an  absolutely 
indisputable  major  premise,  and  shall  proceed  by  equally  in- 
disputable logical  steps,  to  establish  deductively  the  conclusion 
that  God  is,  and — at  least  in  some  degree — as  to  What  God  is. 
The  author  of  the  critical  pliilosophy,^  on  the  contrary  supposed 
himself  to  have  demonstrated  once  for  all  the  illogical  character 
of  all  the  existing  "  proofs  "  of  the  reality  of  God  ;  and  to  have 
shown  in  an  a  priori  way  that  the  very  nature  of  man's  cogni- 
tive faculty  makes  any  knowledge  of  God  impossible.  But 
like  other  demonstrations  which  were  to  settle  for  all  time  the 
limits  of  metaphysics  as  ontology,  this  one  has  been  quite  per- 
sistently disputed  both  by  those  who  believe — as  Kant  himself 
did — in  God,  and  also  by  those  who  are  either  agnostic  or  scep- 
tical toward  the  conception. 

So  far  as  the  claim  to  demonstrate  the  Being  of  God  has 
taken  the  form  of  the  so-called  '^  ontological  argument,"  it  will 
be  discussed  in  its  proper  place.  But  there  are  two  or  three 
somewliat  modified  attempts  at  a  demonstrative  proof  which 
may  fitly  receive  consideration  in  this  connection.  Of  these 
one  may  be  called  the  mathematical  or  geometrical,  par  excel- 
lence ;  and  this,  either  because  it  finds  in  tlie  nature  of  pure 
matliematics  ;in  argument  amounting  to  a  demonstration  of 
God  ;  or  because  it  aims  to  demonstrate  his  Being  more  mathe- 
matico  but  sLirting  from  some  yMa«/-mathematical  conception 

»  Especially  in  the  Kritik  der  Reinen  Vrmunft;  {ind  see  j^rr  contra  the  earlier 
treatises,  Dilncidatio  Nova,  and  Dcr  Einzig  Mogliche  lieireisgmnd  zu  einer 
Demonntration  des  Daseins  GoUcb;  and  the  position  assumcfi  in  the  late*" 
work,  Die  Helicon  inncrhalb  dcr  (t'rcnzrn  dcr  blossen  Vemunfl. 

3 


34  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

or  principle  as  its  major  premise.  In  the  Latter  of  these  two 
cases,  some  conception  of  "Substance" — as  with  Spinoza  for 
example — or  of  "  Pure  Being,"  as  in  the  views  of  the  early 
Neo-Platonists,  is  customarily  made  the  prmdple  of  the  argu- 
ment. Under  this  head  may  be  classed  the  ancient  Platonic 
argument  from  geometry  to  God.  "All  the  judgments  of 
geometrj^,"  says  a  modern  advocate  of  this  view,^  "  imply  that 
there  are  unchanging  relations  in  the  one  system  of  reality  which 
alone  is  or  can  be  known,  and  these  unchanging  relations  con- 
stitute the  objectivity  of  that  system,  so  far  as  it  comes  within 
the  view  of  geometry." 

As  to  this  claim  to  demonstrate  God,  out  of  the  nature  of 
pure  mathematics  or  by  methods  employed  in  the  development 
of  mathematical  conceptions  and  relations,  the  objections,  if 
we  adhere  to  the  strict  construction  of  our  terms,  are  quite  de- 
cisive. Religious  conceptions  in  general  are  not  formed  after 
the  analogy  of  mathematical  conceptions,  nor  are  they  arrived 
at  and  confirmed  by  proof  which  can  be  presented  in  a  form 
similar  to  that  of  a  mathematical  argument.  Indeed,  this, 
which  is  the  Kantian  conception  of  pure  mathematics,  and  of 
its  a  priori  origin  and  nature,  is  now  thoroughly  discredited 
among  mathematicians  themselves.  "  Pure  mathematics,"  just 
so  far  as  it  maintains  and  perfects  its  "  purity,"  abstracts  its 
conceptions  and  propositions  from  all  experience  with  concrete 
realities  and  their  actual  relations.  Yet,  these  same  concep- 
tions and  propositions  are  themselves  derived  from  experience. 
Its  demonstrations  are  therefore  complete,  are  indeed,  strictly 
speaking,  demoiistrations^  only  when  it  is  agreed  to  accept 
some  small  group  of  postulates,  of  the  actuality  of  which  it  is 
impossible  to  arrive  at  an  empirical  proof,  and  proceed  with 
the  strictest  regard  for  the  laws  of  logical  deduction.  In  this 
way  nothing  whatever  is  demonstrated  as  to  the  nature  of 
reality,  except  the  mind's  own  possibility  of  being  logical  and, 
if  logical,  of  avoiding  inherent  self-contradictions .  The  moment, 
1  Professor  Watson,  Christianity  and  Idealism,  p.  158/. 


NATURE  OF  THE  EVIDENCE  35 

however,  we  try  to  picture  reality  in  terms  of  these  purely 
mathematical  conceptions  and  propositions,  we  find  our  attempt 
developing  not  a  few  most  stubborn  contradictions.  All  this 
might  well  enough  convince  us  that  reality  is  not  constructed 
according  to  purely  mathematical  conceptions,  arranged  in  the 
attractive  form  of  a  system  of  interrelated  abstractions.  As 
Schurman  ^  has  well  said  in  contrasting  this  religious  concep- 
tion with  the  conceptions  of  geometry :  "  God,  on  the  other 
hand,  who  is  the  ground  and  source  and  moving  spirit  of  all 
reality,  must  be  the  most  concrete  object  of  our  thought.  By 
no  possibility,  therefore,  can  a  theology  or  science  of  God  fol- 
low the  demonstrative  method  of  mathematics."^  This  conclu- 
fiion  avails  also  against  the  somewhat  looser  opinion  of  Locke,^ 
who  regarded  the  demonstration  not  one  whit  inferior  to 
mathematical  certaint3^ 

On  the  other  hand,  the  possibility  of  applying  mathematics 
to  the  experienced  realities  of  the  world  of  concrete  existences 
and  actual  relations,  is  one  of  the  most  convincing  of  argu- 
ments for  the  position  that  the  Being  of  the  World  is  some 
kind  of  an  orderly  and  rational  totality.  Or  if  we  take  the 
position  of  religious  faith  and  regard  the  system  of  minds  and 
things,  of  which  we  have  an  ever-growing  experience,  and  an 
ever-improving  conception,  as  related  to  God  the  Creator  and 
Preserver,  we  find  in  the  procedure  of  mathematics,  and  in  the 
control  which  it  gives  the  human  mind  over  the  understiinding 
of  phenomena,  a  very  convincing  form  of  evidence  that  Rea- 
son rules  Force  in  the  cosmic  constitution  and  cosmic  develoj)- 
meiit.  There  is,  therefore,  no  conviction  of  modern  science  more 
welcome  to  the  philosophy  of  religion — as  it  is  indispensable  to 
modern  science  itself — than  the  conviction  of  the  unity  and 
systematic  connection  of  all  Reality. 

>  liclief  in  God,  p.  30. 

'See  also  Flint,  Theism,  Appendix,  425^.  on  the  impossibility  of  demon- 
stration, in  mathematical  or  a  prwri  fashion,  of  the  IkMnj;  of  God. 
'  Comp.  Essay  concerning  Human  Understanding,  Book  IV,  chap.  X. 


36  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

The   inner  connection   of    all   the   so-called   arguments  for 
the  Being  of  God  is  shown  again, — as  it  was  shown  in  the 
transition  from  the  claims  of  the  intuitional  theory  to  the  claim 
of  the  ontological  argument, — when  we  consider  what  is  really 
involved  with  reference  to  the  nature  of  the  human  mind  by 
the  application  of  mathematical  conceptions  to  concrete  reali- 
ties and  their  relations.     For  another  form  of  the  demonstra- 
tive argument  sees  in  the  very  possibility  of  any  knowledge 
whatever  an  unanswerable  proof  of  the  Divine  Being.     That 
all  knowledge,  whatever  be  its  object  or  the  method  of  its  as- 
certainment, and  whatever  the  degree  and  nature  of  its  so-called 
evidence,  involves  a  certain  theory  of  reality,  may  be  maintained 
successfully  from  both  the  epistemological  and  the  metaphysi- 
cal points  of  view.     For  knowledge  is  always  of  reality.     The 
mind's  cognitive  attitude  toward  its  object  is  essentially  some  sort 
of  a  grasp — by  belief,  intuition,  inference,  primitive  and  unanaly- 
zable  feeling,  or  by  all  these  and  other  hands  and  tentacles  of  tlie 
soul — upon  the  actuality  of  the  existence  and  of  the  relations 
of  just  this  same  object.     Psychologists   may  try  in  vain  to 
agree,  or  they  may  quarrel  eternally,  over  the  nature  of  the 
cognitive  process.     A  sceptical  theory  of  knowledge  may  carry 
doubt  as  to  the  extra-mental  validity  of  knowledge  to  the  ex- 
treme of   solipsism.     But  in  religion  which  is  invariably,  as 
we  have  already  seen,  a  theory  of  reality,  as  well  as  in  science 
and  in  philosophy,  the  confidence  in  reason  as  a  vital  and  effect- 
ive commerce  between  the  knower  and  the  reality  of  the  object 
known  will  always  prevail.     Knowledge  itself  implies  indubita- 
bly the  actuality  of  certain  universal  standards  of  a  rational 
order.     This  is  true,  whatever  the  specific  object  cognized  may 
be.     The  same  thing  is  true  of  all  reasoning,  whatever  the  sub- 
ject about  which  the  reasoning  is  ;  and  whatever  the  subjective 
condition  of  the  cognitive  and  reasoning  mind  in  which  the 
process  terminates — whether  it  be  affirmation,  denial,  or  doubt. 
To  this  extent  a  so-called  proof  of  the  immanence  of  Reason 
in  both  minds  and  things  may  be  drawn  from  that  experience 


NATURE  OF  THE  EVIDENCE  37 

which  we  call  "  knowledge."  In  this  experience  lie  the  grounds 
of  all  argument  and  proof.  But  to  say  this  is  not  equivalent  to 
affirming  a  demonstration  of  the  Being  of  God. 

We  shall  see  subsequently,  however,  what  a  consensus  of 
evidence  is  reached  by  following  to  the  place  where  they  unite, 
the  particular  and  partial  arguments  for  the  conception  of  re- 
ligion ;  and  as  well  by  considering  the  relation  in  which  all 
these  arguments  stand  to  certain  fundamental  conceptions  of 
science — to  the  categories  of  Being,  Cause,  Law,  Final  Purpose, 
etc.  In  this  way  the  proof  amounts  to  showing  that  certain 
unchanging  factors  in  the  conception  of  God  are  essential,  un- 
changing, and  necessary  features  of  all  liuman  cognitive  con- 
sciousness. Stated  in  figurative  and  somewhat  exaggerated 
form,  the  argument  then  concludes  that  "  To  desire  to  know 
God  without  God  is  impossible  ;  there  is  no  knowledge  without 
liim  who  is  the  Prime  Source  of  knowledge."  Or,  to  employ 
the  more  philosophical  language  of  Hegel :  ^  '^  What  men  call 
the  proofs  of  God's  existence  are,  rightly  understood,  the  ways 
of  describing  and  analyzing  the  native  course  of  the  mind,  the 
coui'se  of  tliowjht^  thinking  the  data  of  the  senses.  .  .  .  The 
leap  into  the  supersensible  which  it  tiikes  when  it  snaps  the 
chain  of  sense,  all  tliis  transition  is  thought  and  nothing  but 
thought."  Here  we  encounter,  to  be  sure,  the  customary 
Hegelian  over-emphasis  and  extension  of '*  thought "  as  con- 
cerned in  both  faith  and  knowledge.  But  this  is  far  truer  to 
the  facts  of  the  case,  wliether  the  objects  of  thouglit  be  those 
proposed  as  problems  to  science,  to  philosophy,  or  to  religion, 
than  is  the  sceptical  epistemology  of  the  Critique  of  Pure 
Reason.  And  religious  feeling,  as  well  as  the  sentiment  for 
the  ideal  of  philosophy,  leads  us  to  sympathy  witli  Hegel  when  he 
elsewhere-'  asks  :  *'  What  knowledge  would  ha  worth  the  pains 
of  acquiring,  if  knowledge  of  God  is  not  attainable?"    Indeed, 

•  The  Lopjic  of  Hccrl,  Wallarc's  Translation,  p.  lO.i;  and  compare  the  re- 
marks on  the  methofl  of  demonstration  as  apphed  to  God,  p.  72/. 
'  rhilottophie  dcr  Kchgion  (Edition  of  Marhcinekc).  I,  p.  37. 


38  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

all  rivulets  and  larger  streams  may  contribute  to  swell  the  river 
that  bears  humanity  toward  that  ocean  of  truth  which  is  the 
knowledge  of  God. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  show  that  processes  of  induction 
similar  to  those  by  which  the  particular  conceptions  or  laws  of  the 
chemico-physical  and  biological  sciences  are  established  do  not 
comport  with  the  essential  nature  of  the  conception  of  God. 
Yet  in  the  larger,  but  no  less  true  and  valid  meaning  of  the 
words,  this  conception  may  be  placed  upon  a  basis  of  expe- 
rience. 

If  the  proof  of  the  Being  of  God  is  to  be  found  neither 
in  some  infallible  vision  of  an  intuitive  sort,  nor  in  some  form 
of  demonstrative  argument,  nor  in  an  induction  which  pro- 
ceeds upon  a  purely  empirical  basis :  Where  is  proof  to  be 
found?  Or  must  the  human  mind  renounce  all  effort  to  rea- 
son its  way  to  the  truth  about  this  central  conception  of  reli- 
gious faith ;  not  to  say,  all  pretence  of  being  able  to  prove  the  ob- 
jective validity  of  the  conception  ?  To  such  questions  it  may  be 
answered  that  the  alternative  which  they  imply  is  neither  well 
conceived  nor  fortunately  expressed.  There  is  a  middle  way 
between  exaggerated  affirmations  of  proof  and  the  negative 
position  of  early  Buddhism  ; 

"No  god  of  heaven  or  Brahma-world 
Doth  cause  the  endless  round  of  birth; 
Constituent  parts  alone  roll  on, 
From  cause  and  from  material  spring. " 

But  this  is  a  childish  philosophy,  if  philosophy  at  all  it  can  be 
called ;  it  is  as  inadequate  to  explain  the  religious  experience 
of  tlie  race  as  the  childish  theogony  it  would  displace  was  inad- 
equate to  compete  with  modern  physical  science.  The  sci- 
entific and  philosophical,  as  truly  as  the  religious  nature  and 
needs  of  man,  can  never  be  satisfied  with  so  barren  a  conclusion. 
The  one  inexhaustible  source  of  evidences  for  the  true  con- 
ception of  God  is  the  expeinence  of  the  race.  But  these  words 
must   not  be  interpreted  in  any  narrow  and  half-hearted  way. 


NATURE  OF  THE  EVIDENCE  39 

This  experience  must  be  considered  in  its  totality  and  as  itself 
subject  to  development.  This  experience  is  all  we  have  on 
which  to  base  any  kind  of  proof ;  but  it  is  enough,  and  even 
more  than  enough,  to  satisfy  all  the  reasonable  demands  made 
upon  it.  Indeed,  in  all  the  lines  of  evidence,  the  so-called  proofs, 
the  attempt  at  a  satisfactory  understanding  of  the  origin,  laws, 
historical  course,  and  meaning,  of  the  world  can  never  disre- 
gard the  origin,  nature,  needs,  destiny,  and  historical  develop- 
ment of  man  as  chiefly  necessary  to  its  full  account.^  The 
proof  of  God  for  the  individual  searcher  may,  therefore,  take 
some  such  form  of  argument  as  the  following:  Whatever  else 
really  is,  or  is  not  really,  in  the  world,  I  am  here  ;  and  I  want 
myself  explained  to  myself,  made  self-consistent  and  helped  in 
self-development,  in  a  satisfactory  way.  This  "  myself "  in- 
cludes not  only  my  bodily  organism  and  dependent  connec- 
tion witli  external  nature  and  with  the  race,  but  also  my  own 
truest  and  highest  self,  with  its  hidden  potentialities  and  aspira- 
tions, its  hopes,  fears,  and  ideals  touching  its  own  destiny. 
"  With  the  mass  of  faculties  and  capacities  and  experiences, 
which  constitute  my  personal  nature,"  said  Cardinal  New- 
man, "  I  believe  in  God." 

The  generalizations  and  courses  of  reasoning  by  wliich  this 
intelligent,  but  personal  faith  in  God  may  be  converted  into  a 
quasi-scienti^c  and  philosophical  proof  of  the  validity  of  the 
conception  of  God,  have  themselves  no  otlier  source  than  the 
experience  of  the  race.  We  may  say  with  Schultz  '  then  :  '*  To 
be  certiiin  of  the  existence  of  God  means,  fundamentally  con- 
sidered, to  recognize  as  necessary  the  religious  view  of  the 
world."  But  just  what  is  the  truth  of  this  view  of  the  Being 
of    the    World,  and  how  it  is  so  to  be  stated  and  ex})()undod  as 

1  As  says  iSabntier  (Esquisse  d'linc  Philosophic  dc  hi  Hehi^ion,  p.  120): 
"Pour  se  repr(''.stuxter  le  divin,  Phonirne  n'a  jamais  eu  <iue  les  ressoiirces  <]ui 
sent  en  hii.  C'cst  dire  que,  ces  reprj^-sentationa  varieront  avec  le  progrea 
g6ii<fnil  (ie  l'exp<^Tience  ct  de  la  pen9<^." 

'  Gnindriss  der  ('hristlichen   Apologetik,   p.   73. 


40  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

to  harmonize  with  all  the  otlier  cognitions  and  reasonable  faiths 
of  humanity,  is  a  task  for  the  philosophy  of  religion  to  accom- 
plish. The  different  lines  of  consideration  which  it  pursues, 
and  which  it  endeavors  to  arrange  in  logical  and  at  least  approx- 
imately harmonious  and  systematic  form,  constitute  the  argu- 
ments for  the  trustworthiness  of  the  religious  view.  But 
this  experience  of  the  race  to  which  philosophy  looks  for  its 
pioof  of  the  Being  of  God  must  be  taken  sincerely,  sympatliet- 
ically,  and  in  its  totality.  With  regard  to  parts  of  it,  that  is 
doubtless  true  which  Schopenhauer  asserted,  namely,  that  the 
proof  is  *'  Keraunological "  rather  than  purely  theoretic ;  that 
is  to  say,  it  is  based  on  needs  of  the  will  rather  than  on  notions 
of  the  intellect.  But  this  is  only  partial  truth.  The  scientific 
and  logical  considerations  must  not  be  separated  from  the  eth- 
ical, the  aesthetical,  and  the  more  definitively  religious.  For  as 
Professor  Howison  has  well  said  :^  "There  will  be,  and  will 
ever  remain,  an  impassable  gulf  between  the  religious  conscious- 
ness and  the  logical,  unless  the  logical  consciousness  reaches 
lip  to  embrace  the  relitjions^  and  learns  to  state  the  absolute  Is 
in  terms  of  absolute  Oughts  In  a  word,  the  implication  of  God 
in  human  experience  is  not  a  simple  intuition,  nor  is  it  a  sin- 
gle line  of  demonstrative  or  inductive  reasoning.  On  the  con- 
trary— counting  only  the  "  moments  "  which  can  be  explicated 
• — it  is  an  enormously  subtile  and  complex  net-work  of  consid- 
erations. And  reason  cannot  be  content  with  the  assumption, 
or  the  conclusion,  of  an  ''  impassable  gulf  "  between  any  two 
parts  of  the  one  experience  of  the  one  race. 

From  this  preliminary  survey  of  the  nature  of  the  evidence 
which  may  reasonably  be  expected,  and  which  is  in  fact  attain- 
able, for  the  validity  of  the  religious  view  of  the  Being  of  the 
World,  we  may  derive  these  three  practical  considerations. 
They  will  serve  to  guide  the  subsequent  examination  of  the 
so-called  "  proofs  "  to  a  safer,  if  a  somewhat  lower  ground. 
And,  first :  The  final  purpose  of  the  argument  is  not  to  demon- 

1  Introduction  to  Professor  Royce's  Conception  of  God,  p.  124. 


NATURE  OF  THE  EVIDENCE  41 

strate  some  particular  conception  of  God,  as  though  no  history 
of  religious  experience,  and  of  rational  endeavor  to  understand 
this  experience,  lay  back  of  us  in  the  past  of  the  race.  We 
are  not  going  to  assume  the  airs,  or  play  the  part,  of  "upstarts  ' 
in  this  field  of  the  philosophy  of  religion.  This  belief  in  God 
has  been  in  the  world  through  untold  centuries ;  it  has  already 
undergone  a  significant  process  of  development.  It  has,  at 
least  in  certain  quarters,  been  rising  into  nobler  proportions 
and  purer  form,  for  no  inconsiderable  part  of  these  untold 
centuries.  The  men  of  to-day  did  not  create  it ;  and  they 
cannot  undo  it.  No  individual  can  construct  or  understand 
this  conception  by  trying  to  separate  himself  either  from  the 
racial  experience  which  justifies  it,  or  from  the  more  or  less 
successful  students  of  this  experience.  New  proofs  are  scarcely 
to  be  expected,  except  in  so  far  as  this  ever  unfolding  experi- 
ence affords  an  unfailing  source  of  such  proof.  The  critical 
but  constructive  attitude  toward  the  arfxuments  for  the  Beinor 
of  God  cannot  escape  from  the  historical  limitations  or  dispense 
with  the  historical  helps.  But  neither  can  the  sceptical  or  ag- 
nostic attitude.  If  we  men  of  the  hour  are  not  rational  beings, 
and  potential  sons  of  God,  but  only  "  moving  shadow-sliapes ;" 
still  we  must  stand  in  order,  where  we  are  "  held  by  the  mas- 
ter of  the  show." 

And,  second,  every  conception  of  God  must,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  be  both  anthro[)omorphic  and  inadequate.  But,  prop- 
erly understood,  the  charges  usually  conveyed  by  these  words 
are  neither  deterrent  nor  wholly  discouraging.  The  one  pos- 
tulated [)rin(n[)le  of  an  epistemological  order  which  underlies 
and  validates  all  reasoning  on  tliis  subject  is,  indeed,  the  right 
to  argue  from  the  liunian  pci-sonality  to  the  Divine  Person- 
alit}'.  Of  coui-se,  such  procedure  is  anthropomorphic.  Hut, 
of  course,  and  in  essentially  tln^  same  way,  those  who  attempt 
to  answer,  to  refute,  or  to  criticise  the  arguments  will  be  an- 
thropomorphic, will  also  personify.  Essentially  the  same  pro- 
cedure characterizes  every  form  of  argument,  by  which  men 


42  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

either  advance  tlieir  knowledge  or  lift  up  their  faith  to  loftier 
heights  of  purer  air  and  brighter  sunshine.  It  is  anthropo- 
morphic experience,  human  experience,  which  must  be  ac- 
cepted in  fact,  and  accounted  for,  evaluated,  and  explained. 
It  is  human  thinking  which  accounts  for  and  explains  all  this 
experience  ;  it  is  human  ethical  and  sesthetical  feeling  which  es- 
timates the  varying  values  of  the  different  experiences.  Such 
Anthropomorphism  is  as  truly  present  in  science  as  it  is  in  reli- 
gion. In  a  word,  all  growth  of  humanity  in  knowledge  or  ra- 
tional belief  is  dependent  upon  the  validity  of  a  certain  quasi- 
personifying  process.  And  when  it  is  proclaimed  that  this 
process  may  be  valid  to  discover  that  God  is,  but  can  never  re- 
veal anything  true  about  what  God  is,  the  mind  is  mocked  un- 
worthily. To  establish  by  argument  that  mere  undefined  or 
Unknowable  Being  is  at  the  core  of  the  universe,  is  to  conclude 
the  dream  about  reality  with  a  Fiction  so  grotesque  that  we 
may  fitly  find  ourselves  awaking  with  an  explosion  of  uncon- 
trollable laughter. 

Finally,  every  one  of  the  so-called  arguments  for  the  Being 
of  God,  and  indeed  every  one  of  the  natural  sources  of  man's 
religious  experience,  may  lead  to  either  valid  or  worthless 
conclusions,  according  to  the  degree  of  rational  elaboration,  and 
of  ethical  discipline  and  refinement  which  it  receives.  As 
Oakesmith  says  ^  of  the  "  sense  of  personal  dependence  upon  a 
benevolent  supernatural  power"  which  Plutarch  associated 
with  the  teachings  of  Demonology  :  ''  It  may  be  identical  with 
the  purest  and  loftiest  religion,  or  may  degenerate  into  the 
meanest  and  most  degrading  superstition,  according  to  its  de- 
velopment in  the  mind  of  the  individual  believer."  In  respect 
of  every  moral  attribute  w^hich  religion  ascribes  to  Deity,  and 
every  metaphysical  predicate  which  philosophy  assigns  to  the 
Pei-sonal  Absolute,  and  indeed  with  regard  to  the  entire  subtle 
and  complex  conception  which  answers  in  different  minds,  and 
in  different  stages  of  race-culture,  to  the  name  of  '*  God,"  the 

1  The  Religion  of  Plutarch,  p.  174. 


NATURE  OP^   J  HE  EVIDENCE  43 

same  thing  is  true.  Botli  the  monistic  and  the  dualistic  view 
of  God  and  the  World  may  lead  to  their  respective  bad  or  good 
results.  Helpful  trutlis  or  pernicious  errors  may  be  logically 
joined  to  many  of  the  factors  which  enter  into  either  the  pan- 
theistic or  the  deistic  conception  of  the  Divine.  Superstition 
is  not  confined  to  savage  or  primitive  man.  But  wherever  it 
occurs,  its  cure  requires  more  light  from  reason  and  experience, 
rather  than  agnosticism  or  the  denial  of  the  grounds  and  rights 
of  religious  faith.  Superstition  is,  indeed,  a  "  dimming  rheum  ;  " 
but  we  must  not  "  knock  the  eye  out  for  the  sake  of  removing 
the  rheum."  We  must  not,  because  false  and  inadequate  views 
of  Deity  accompany  all  the  thought  of  the  race  upon  the  sub- 
ject, "  turn  the  sight  of  faith  into  the  blindness  of  Atheism." 
Both  superstition  and  atheism,  as  Plutarch  held,  spring  from 
ignorance.  And  Goethe  averred  that  "  the  profoundest,  the 
most  essential  and  paramount  theme  of  human  interest  is  the 
eternal  conflict  between  atheism  and  superstition." 

Our  problem  may  then  be  stated  anew  in  essentially  its  old 
form  but  as  seen  from  an  advanced  point  of  view.  We  seek 
for  a  liarmony  between  that  conception  of  God  which  the  liigh- 
est  religious  experience  of  the  race  has  brought  into  existence — 
the  conception,  namely,  of  God  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  the 
Father  and  Redeemer  of  mankind — ^and  that  conception  of  the 
Being  of  the  World  whicli  is  most  tenable  in  accordance  with 
the  conclusions  of  modern  science  and  philosophy.  We  do  not 
dream  of  discovering  this  hainiony  by  means  of  any  infallible 
intuition  ;  or  of  demonstrating  it  after  tlie  methods  of  pure 
mathematics  or  of  experimentation  in  the  more  restricted  fields 
of  the  physico-chemical  sciences.  We  enter  upon  the  attempt, 
Ix'ing  aware  of  the  limitations  of  our  method  and  certain  of 
attaining,  at  iKist  only  a  relative  success.  Our  conception  of 
the  Divine  Being  will  Im;  a  liuman  conception;  and  it  will 
tlierefore  1x3  inadequate,  incomplete,  an<l  possibly  in  some  of 
its  elements  lacking  in  a  desirable  self-consistency.  But  we 
shall  try  to  remain  obedient  to  tlie  voices  of  history,  and  trust- 


44  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ful  of  that  light  of  reason  which  has  been  always  illumining 
the  race.  Yet  more  :  We  find  warrant  for  regarding  even  such 
a  conception  of  God  as  a  rational  postulate  on  which  converge 
so  man}^  lines  of  evidence  that  it  may  be  accepted  with  confi- 
dence, and  held  with  a  firm  tenure  ; — and  this,  because  it  af- 
fords the  fullest  attainable  explanation  for  the  experience  of 
the  race,  and  the  fullest  satisfaction  for  the  intellectual,  ethi- 
cal, aesthetical,  and  spiritual  needs  of  humanity. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

THE   CUSTOMARY   PROOFS    EXA^HNED 

It  has  for  a  long  time  been  the  custom  of  believers  in  The- 
ism to  throw  the  different  lines  of  evidence  for  the  Reality 
answering  to  the  conception  of  God  into  the  form  of  definite 
arguments  or  so-called  '*  proofs."  ^  The  nature  of  these  proofs 
is  manifold  ;  and  each  one  of  them  corresponds  more  or  less 
accurately  to  some  one  or  more  permanent  phase  or  aspect  of 
man's  thoughts  about  himself  and  about  the  world  in  which 
he  lives.  It  has  already  been  indicated,  however,  that  the  true 
and  conclusive  argument  is  based  upon  the  way  in  which  the 
conception  accords  with  the  sum-total  of  the  experience  of 
the  race,  and  thus  assists  us  in  understanding  that  experience 
and  in  promoting  the  satisfaction  of  its  needs. 

These  proofs  liave  been  so  often  and  so  ably  presented  and 
criticised  in  their  customary  form,  that  any  new  examination 
of  this  great  problem  may  be  excused  from  the  effort  to  con- 
tribute original  and  important  material  to  their  discussion.^  15 ut 
they  are  all  so  importiint  to  an  understanding  of  the  nature  of 
tlie  problem,  and  so  essential  to  every  attempt  at  its  improved 
statement  and  solution,  that  they  cannot  l>e  wholly  passed  over 
by  the  phihjscjpby  of  religion.     We  shall  content  ourselves  with 

•  The  so-called  cosmologicul  argument,  us  it  has  inlluenced  Chriiitian  the- 
ology, goes  back  to  Aristotle;  the  teleological,  to  Socrates,  etc. 

•  Among  the  numerous  IkkjIch  on  Theism,  |)orha{)s  none  gives  a  mora  8at> 
isfact<jry  i>opular  survey  and  criticism  of  the  customary  arguments  for  the 
lieing  of  (Jod  than  that  by  Professor  J.  J.  Tigert:  "Theism.  A  Survey  of  the 
Paths  thiit  Lead  to  God."  The  discussiori  of  the  Theologian  J.  A.  Dorner, 
System  der  Chriatlichen  Glaubcnslehre,  I,  pp.  173-330,  is  particularly  valu- 
able. 

45 


46  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

a  brief  attempt  to  estimate  the  value  which  they  seem  to  possess 
in  their  relations  as  factors  to  the  reconstructed  argument. 

At  the  head  of  the  arguments  for  the  Being  of  God  it  has 
been  customary  to  place  the  so-called  "  Ontological."  From 
its  very  nature  tliis  argument  in  its  more  modern  form  implies 
a  high  development  of  the  speculative  and  metaphysical  in- 
terests and  aptitudes  of  man.  Historically  considered  it  is, 
therefore,  of  course  a  relatively  late  product  of  his  reasoning 
faculties.  In  that  more  positive  statement  in  which  it  has  in- 
fluenced theology  and  the  philosophy  of  religion  it  was  shaped 
principally  by  The  Church  Father  Anselm  (1033-1109)  and 
by  the  philosopher  Descartes  (1596-1650).  The  distrust  of  it, 
and  the  partial  if  not  complete  overthrow  of  its  independent  (?) 
influence,  was  brought  about  by  the  trenchant  criticism  of 
Kant.  "  The  conception  of  God  to  which,  on  cosmological 
grounds,  by  a  logical  ascent  from  the  particular  to  the  univer- 
sal, Anselm  had  arrived  in  the  3Ionologium^  he  seeks  in  the 
I*roslogium  (originally  entitled  Fides  querens  Intellectum)  to 
justify  ontologically  by  a  simple  development  of  the  concep- 
tion of  God."  The  argument  ran  thus  :  Every  man,  even  "  the 
fool,"  has  in  his  mind  the  conception  of,  or  belief  in,  a  good 
than  which  no  greater  can  be  thought.  But  that  is  not  the 
greatest  thinkable  good  which  exists  merely  in  the  mind,  but 
does  not  also  exist  in  reality.  Therefore  this  greatest  good 
must  exist  in  reality,  as  well  as  in  the  human  intellect ;  and  this 
greatest  really  existent  Good  is  "our  Lord  God." 

The  argument  of  Anselm  was  considered  unsound  even  by 
some  of  his  contemporaries  among  the  believers  in  Christianity ; 
it  was  estimated  as  a  pure  paralogism,  especially  by  the  monk 
Gaunilo,  Count  of  Montigni,  in  a  controversial  treatise.  Liber 
pro  Insipiente.  The  critical  Kant  pointed  out  that  the  onto- 
logical argument  cannot  be  considered  as  an  independent,  much 
less  a  demonstrative  proof.  It  does,  however,  enter  in  an  es- 
sential way  into  the  ontological  validity  of  all  the  arguments. 
It  is — to  use  the  phrase  of  Kant — their  nervus  prohandi. 


CUSTOMARY  PROOFS  EXAMINED  47 

For  the  system  of  thought  which  Descartes  elaborated,  the 
conception  of  God  was  not  simply  of  supreme  moral  and  re- 
ligious significance  ;  the  demonstrable  ontological  validity  of 
this  conception  was  the  bridge  over  which  the  human  mind 
must  pass  from  the  last  inner  retreat  of  consciousness  to  a 
world  of  verifiable  experienced  realities.  With  this  thinker 
the  ontological  argument  took  more  than  one  form.  In  the 
Third  Meditation,  Descartes,  in  accordance  with  his  general 
doctrine  of  Method,  proceeds  to  argue  from  the  perfectly  clear 
idea  of  an  infinite,  eternal,  and  unchangeable  Being  to  the  In- 
finite Reality  corresponding  to  the  idea.  Such  an  idea  de- 
mands a  corresponding  reality  as  its  cause.  In  the  Fifth  ]\Ied- 
itation  the  claim  is  advanced  that,  just  as  it  follows  of  neces- 
sity from  the  essence  of  a  triangle  that  the  sum  of  its  angles  = 
2  right  angles,  so  it  follows  from  the  essence  of  the  idea  of  a 
most  perfect  Being  that  such  a  Being  really  exists.  Existence 
in  reality  is  a  perfection  ;  hence  God  exists. 

The  essential  thini^  about  all  these  forms  of  the  so-called 
ontological  argument  is  the  claim  that  we  may  conclude  with 
a  perfect  conviction — Nay  !  that  we  must  conclude — from  the 
conception  of  the  Divine  Being,  as  it  exists  in  human  thought, 
to  the  extra-mental  reality  of  the  same  Being.  In  this  very 
fact  Kant  found  its  fatal  defect: — namely,  that  it  did,  without 
additional  warrant  as  it  were,  pass  from  idea  to  actuality  ; — 
from  the  object  as  conceived  to  the  Thing-in-itself.  Tlius  all 
the  arguments  of  theology  became  the  conspicuous  insbmce  of 
that  vain  pretence  of  knowledge,  of  wliich  mcUij^hysics — in 
the  sense  of  ontological  doctrine — is  perpetually  guilty.  To 
state  the  objection  in  the  terse  manner  of  Ueberweg:'  The  on- 
tological argument  is  a  *' meaningless  tautology;"  and  "the 
only  conclusion  which  is  logically  valid  is  this  ;  so  surely  as 
God  exists,  so  surely  is  he  a  real  l>eing."  On  the  other  hiind, 
it  is  complained  of  such  curt  dismissal  of  the  ontological  argu- 
ment, and  with  reason,  that  the  objection  overlooks  the  very 

1  A  History  of  Philosophy  (English  Tran^ilation  of  1S72),  I,  p.  384. 


48  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

consideration  on  which  the  argument  is  based ;  and  this  con- 
sideration is,  the  peculiar  nature  of  the  conception  itself.  Cer- 
tainly, to  borrow  the  figure  of  speech  with  which  even  Kant 
stooped  to  ridicule  this  so-called  proof,  the  conceived  hundred 
dollars  that  are  not  in  my  pocket  do  not  add  a  penny  to  the 
sum  that  is  really  there.  But  if  what  Descartes  set  out  to 
prove  is  this — *'  That  God  is  the  only  sufficient  source  or 
cause  of  the  idea  of  God, — i.  e.,  the  Infinite  and  the  Perfect,"^ — 
the  alleged  proof  may  fall  far  short  of  a  demonstration  with- 
out by  any  means  losing  all  claim  to  evidential  value. 

Differently  understood  and  more  fairly  rated,  this  argument 
can  be  so  employed  as  to  turn  Kant's  criticism  of  it  against 
himself.  For  with  Kant — and  this  is  the  central  positive  posi- 
tion of  the  critical  philosoph}^ — Reality  is  always  apprehended 
by  the  human  mind  under  the  formal  conditions  of  a  synthetic 
judgment  a  priori.  Only  then,  if  we  regai-d  the  judgment  which 
affirms  the  self-existence  of  the  Absolute  as  a  merely  logical 
and  analytical  judgment,  a  sort  of  equation  between  adjectives, 
can  we  demolish  it  in  so  summary  a  fashion.  But  in  fact,  this 
judgment  is  not  merely  abstract,  logical,  and  analytical.  It  is, 
the  rather,  an  exceedingly  complex  synthetic  affair^  a  summing 
up  of  many  threads  of  argument,  taken  from  the  complex  web 
of  Reality,  and  woven  together  by  human  thinking.  The 
grounds,  the  necessary  conditions,  and  the  substance  of  the 
experience,  which  enter  into  the  argument,  belong  to  the  con- 
stitution of  reason  itself.  Something  like  this  Kant  was  him- 
self forced  to  confess  in  his  "  Critique  of  the  Practical  Reason," 
and  even  more  in  his  '*  Critique  of  Judgment." 

In  its  peculiarly  Cartesian  form  the  ontological  argument  is 
therefore,  on  the  one  hand,  refuted  as  a  demonstration  of  a 
purely  a  priori  sort,  and  on  the  other,  confirmed  as  a  necessary 
and  rational  explanation  of  the  historical  conditions  under  which, 

1  This  argument  is  presented  at  length  by  Gratry  in  his  Connaissance  de 
Dieu:  "  C'est-a-dire  I'idee  de  Dieu,  laquelle  des  qu'elle  est  obtenue,  prouve 
par  elle-meme  que  Dieu  existe."  (2  vols.,  5th  ed.,  Paris,  1856.) 


CUSTOMARY  PROOFS  EXAMINED  49 

slowly  and  through  the  centuries  and  in  dependence  upon  all 
the  ideal  lines  of  human  development,  this  conception  of  God 
as  perfect  personal  Being  has  come  to  the  fore.  We  cannot, 
perhaps,  say  with  Principal  Caird  :  ^  "  The  true  meaning  of  the 
Ontological  proof  is  this,  that  as  spiritual  beings  our  whole 
conscious  life  is  based  on  a  universal  self-consciousness,  an  Ab- 
solute Spiritual  Life,  w^hich  is  not  a  mere  subjective  notion  or 
conception,  but  which  carries  with  it  the  proof  of  its  necessary 
existence  or  reality."  We  cannot  argue  with  Anselm  and 
Descartes  that  what  I  conceive  of  as  ivorfhiest  of  existence  is 
thereby  proved  actually  to  exist.  But  we  may  draw  in  sympathy 
near  to  the  truth  as  Fichte  affirmed  it :  "  We  must  end  at  last 
by  resting  all  existence  which  demands  an  extrinsic  foundation 
upon  a  Being  the  fountain  of  whose  life  is  within  Himself;  by 
allying  the  fugitive  phenomena,  which  color  the  stream  of  time 
with  ever-changing  lives,  to  an  eternal  and  unchanging  exist- 
ence." The  World  is  only  intelligible  to  us,  if  our  thinking  is 
true  thinking ;  if  it  brings  us,  so  to  say,  into  commerce  with 
Reality.  Figurative  and  poetical  ways  of  stating  this  meta- 
pliysical  postulate,  which  is  entitled  to  reverse  the  entire  scep- 
tical conclusion  of  the  Kantian  theory  of  knowledge,  are 
abundant  enough  in  the  literature  both  of  philosophy  and  of 
religion.  *'  The  '  is  '  between  subject  and  predicate,"  said  Herder, 
"  is  my  demonstration  of  God."  "  God  is  the  truth  in  us," 
said  Leibnitz.  And  Harms  declared  that  "in  all  finite  spirits 
the  idea  of  the  truth  is  contained  a  priories  an  original  thought 
which  arises  out  of  the  essence  of  the  spirit  itself." 

In  the  opinion  of  Pfleiderer'^  the  argument  from  religion  and 
that  from  the  theory  of  knowledge  were  both  originally  identical 
— as  seen  in  the  Confessions  of  Augustine  and  in  the  writings 
of  Anselm — with  "  the  kernel  of  the  ontological  argument." 
The  history  of  philosophy  in  its  relations  to  religion  seems  to 
suggest  this  view.     Even  in  Hiuldhisni,  with  its  fundamentiil 

'  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  1.50. 

3  Philosophy  of  Religion  (English  Translation,  ed.  1888),  III,  p.  274/. 


50  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

doctrine  that  '*  all  the  constituents  of  Being  are  transitory," 
the  distinction  has  to  be  introduced  between  "  Karma-existence  " 
and  "  Originating-existence."  ^  "  Existence  is  twofold  ;  there 
is  Karma-existence  and  an  Originating-existence."  The  Wheel 
of  Existence  is  indeed  without  known  beginning ;  and  yet,  just 
as  the  ignorant  and  desiring  Mind  has  made  it  to  exist,  so  the 
blessed  and  wise  Mind  may  cause  it  to  cease  to  be.  Thus  also 
in  the  "  Discussion  of  Dependent  Origination  "  between  Sakya- 
muni  and  Ananda,  where  Name  and  Form  are  made  the  cause, 
the  occasion,  and  the  origin  of  all  dependent  existence,  both 
are  personified  and  deified  in  the  fashion  of  Oriental  mystical 
metaphysics.  Elsewhere,^  however,  in  the  effort  to  escape  all 
ontology,  and  playing  with  mere  words  and  symbols  and  figures 
of  speech.  Buddhism  assures  us  that  Form  itself  is  caused  by 
ignorance,  desire,  attachment,  and  Karma  ;  while  Name  depends 
on  the  senses  and  attention. 

Man,  in  a  germinal  form  found  everywhere  existing  but  only 
ripening  along  certain  lines  of  development  under  the  more 
favorable  conditions  into  the  fruitage  of  a  rational  Theism, 
conceives  of  and  reasons  about  the  Ground  in  Reality  of  his 
own  being  and  of  the  existence  of  things.  His  conceptions  are 
thus  variously  shaped  by  the  effort  to  give  such  an  account  of 
his  varied  experiences  as  shall  satisfy  the  constitutional  and 
permanent  demands  of  his  own  life.  What  the  ontological 
proof  so-called  amounts  to  is,  therefore,  this  :  It  is  difficult  or 
impossible,  from  thepoint  of  view  of  reflective  and  self-consistent 
thought,  to  regard  the  conception  of  God  as  a  purely  subjective 
development.  This  conception,  as  human  reason  has  somehow 
succeeded  in  framing  it,  seems  to  the  same  reason  to  demand 
the  Reality  of  God. 

The  gist  of  the  Cosmological  argument  is  found  in  the  log- 
ical and,  as  well,  the  practical  necessity  of  referring  the  de- 

1  The  quotations  are  from  Buddhism  in  Translation;    Harvard  Oriental 
Series,  vol.  3. 

2  Visuddhi-Magga,  Chapters  XVII  and  XX. 


CUSTOMARY  PROOFS  EXAMINED  51 

pendent  and  relative  character  of  finite  beings  and  events  to 
the  Unity  of  some  Independent  or  Absolute  Ground.  Its 
point  of  starting  is,  then,  to  be  located  in  man's  concrete,  par- 
ticular knowledge  of  the  world ;  its  impulse  proceeds  from  the 
feeling  of  dissatisfaction  with  the  fragmentary  and  discrete 
character  of  the  explanation  which  this  point  of  view  affords ; 
its  movement  is  along  the  argument  from  causation  onward 
and  upward  towards  a  resting  place  in  some  ultimate  or  primal 
causative  Principle.  Against  this  argument,  as  it  has  custom- 
arily been  employed  by  theology,  two  powerful  objections  may 
be  brought :  First,  that  the  argument  involves  the  attempt 
at  an  impossible  regressus  ad  ii)Jinitnm^  a  search  for  cause  be- 
yond cause,  and  other  cause  still  back  of  this, — the  wliole  proc- 
ess being  without  power  or  prospect  of  ever  reaching  the  end 
of  the  chain  of  causation.  It  is  also  objected,  secondl}',  that 
any  application  of  the  law  of  causality  under  whieli  man 
knows  the  phenomenal  world,  to  a  region  whicli  is  qualitatively 
different  from  the  phenomenal,  involves  a  misconception  of  the 
principle  of  causality  itself.  Both  these  objections  do,  indeed, 
bear  heavily  against  the  cosmological  argument,  as  it  has  been 
customary  to  employ  it ;  but  they  both  involve  a  misconce^v 
tion  of  tlie  principle  of  causality,  and  of  the  use  which  it  is 
proper  to  make  of  this  principle  in  the  reconstruction  of  the 
argument. 

The  conception  of  a  ''  World-Ground,"  or  so-called  ''  First 
Cause  "of  all  finite  beings  and  events,  has  been  an  exceedingly 
slow  and  painful  evolution.  But  the  conception  is  an  important 
product  of  man's  ment;d  develo[)ment ;  and  any  incjuiry  into  its 
validity  nujuires  a  criticism  which  profoundly  concerns  not 
only  the  faiths  of  religion  but  also  the  rational  beliefs  postu- 
latetl,  and  the  conclusions  confirmed,  by  science  and  by  phi- 
losophy. For  untold  ages  the  race  existed  without  any  clear 
and  reasoned  conception  of  the  unit}-  and  personality  of  the 
Divine  Being.  Not  until  late  did  man  aim  at  th('  position 
from  which  to  frame   the  conct'j)tion  of  a  Pci"Sonal  Abeolute  as 


52  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  Ground  of  all  cosmic  existences  and  events,  the  First  and 
the  Final  Cause  of  all  human  experiences.  But  all  the  way, 
in  its  gropings  after  the  true  idea  of  God,  as  well  as  in  its 
growth  of  scientific  and  reflective  knowledge,  the  human  mind 
has  made  use  of  the  cosmological  argument.  This  is  simply 
to  say  that  man  has  been  trying  to  explain  his  own  expe- 
rience, and  to  satisfy  his  own  needs,  by  interpreting  the  world 
of  things  and  of  selves  in  terms  of  a  higher  and  more  univer- 
sal, real  Principle. 

In  all  such  work  of  the  interpretation  of  experience,  the 
human  mind  both  posits  and  infers  entities  that  act  upon  it 
and  upon  one  another.  This  is  true  of  savage  man  ;  it  is  true 
of  childish  man  ;  it  is  true  of  insane  man  ;  it  is  true  of  scientific 
and  cultured  man.  It  is  as  true  of  the  Berkeleian  idealist,  or 
the  Comtean  positivist,  as  it  is  of  the  common-sense  realist 
or  the  so-called  "reconstructed"  realist.  Without  some  such 
intellectual  movement  of  a  metaphysical  character  neither 
science  nor  religion  could  arise  and  develop. 

Our  study  of  the  phenomena  of  man's  religious  life  and  reli- 
gious development  has  shown  us  the  truth  of  the  declaration 
of  D'Alviella  :  ^  "  The  savage,  wherever  he  finds  life  and  move- 
ment, refers  them  to  the  only  source  of  activity  of  which  he 
has  any  direct  knowledge,  namely  the  will."  And  this  will  is 
never  the  "  pure  activity  "  of  '*  non-being,"  but  the  will  of 
some  spiritual  agent.  In  this  way  mythology,  whether  of  the 
religious  order  or  not,  grows  up  and  flourishes  with  its  in- 
structive and  yet  grotesque  and  monstrous  contributions  to 
the  cosmological  argument  with  reference  to  the  Being  of  the 
World.  Of  the  primitive  man  Roskoff  ^  truly  says  ;  His  con- 
clusion is  the  joining  of  the  phenomena  together,  according  to 
the  laws  of  thought,  in  the  relation  of  ground  and  conse- 
quence ;  he  operates  in  general  according  to  the  principle  of 
causality."     The  same  author  adds :     "  This  inner  impulse  has 

1  Origin  and  Growth  of  the  Conception  of  God  p.  52. 

2  Das  Religionswesen  der  rohesten  Volkerstamme,  p.  129. 


CUSTOMARY  PROOFS  EXAMINED  53 

been  called  a  '  metaphysical  instinct. '  "  With  chastened  and 
corrected  imagination,  and  enlarged  and  more  penetrating  ob- 
servation, modern  science  refers  the  same  phenomena  to  phys- 
ical entities,  to  masses,  atoms,  corpuscles,  ions,  or  ether,  etc. ; 
and  it  weaves  new  connections  between  these  entities,  of  a  most 
marvelous  and  incredible  intricacy,  according  to  the  same 
principle  of  causality. 

In  one  of  its  oldest  forms  the  cosraological  argument  led 
Aristotle  from  motion  in  the  world  of  things  to  a  Being  which 
must  be  conceived  of  as  a  Prime  Mover.  Through  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  in  its  most  subtile  and  refined  modern  form,  this 
argument  implies  that  the  rational  conceptions  of  cause, 
ground,  and  law,  may  be  applied  to  reality  in  the  interests  of 
a  better  explanation  of  concrete  human  experiences.  The  im- 
plication is  undoubtedly  true.  There  is  no  form  of  contesting 
it  that  does  not  either  employ  essentially  the  same  argument, 
or  else  end  in  some  absurd  and  self-contradictory  form  of  scep- 
ticism in  matters  of  science  as  well  as  of  religion. 

At  the  same  time  any  use  of  the  cosmological  argument 
which  relies  upon  the  mere  recoil  of  the  mind  from  an  in- 
finite regressus,  and  upon  the  incomprehensible  and  absurd 
nature  of  the  infinite  series  of  causal  connections,  in  order 
to  justify  tlie  conception  of  a  so-called  First  Cause,  deprives 
itself  of  all  real  cogenc}'.  "  First  Cause,"  in  the  cosmological 
argument,  cannot  mean  simply,  at  the  beginning  in  time ;  it 
must  mean,  as  Mr.  Spencer  admits^ — '*  Infinite  and  Absolute." 
The  moment  this  argument  separates  the  Ground  of  the  Uni- 
verse from  present  human  experience,  and  thus  conceives  of  a 
God  that  is  aloof  fi-oin  tlie  actually  existing  world,  its  ten- 
dency is  toward  a  Deism  which  science  rejects  as  unnecessary  for 
an  explanation  of  plu'n()mena,and  which  religious  feeling  regards 
iis  cold  and  unsatisfying.  The  (tod  man  needs,  if  lie  needs 
any  God  at  all,  whether  to  come  near  to  liis  lieart  or  to  quicken 
and  support  his  intellect,  is  not  a  Being  whose  living  relations 

>  First  rriuciplc-s  (cditiou  of  1872),  p.  38. 


54  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

with  the  world  of  things  and  selves  lie  chiefly  antecedent  to, 
or  run  mostly  separate  from,  this  same  known  world  of  things 
and  selves.  On  this  point  it  has  been  well  said :  ^  "  Not  a  mere 
foundation  of  Being  in  the  abstract  ....  but  a  real,  actually 
existing,  primitive  Ground  (^Urgrund)  of  all  reality,"  is  what 
the  cosmological  argument  seeks  to  establish. 

In  the  use  of  the  cosmological  argument  it  is  essential  that 
we  should,  on  the  one  hand,  guard  against  such  agnostic  prej- 
udices as  render  both  modern  science  and  critical  reflection 
wholly  doubtful  about  the  nature  of  Reality ;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  we  should  not  accept  that  extreme  of  dogmatic  con- 
fidence which  concedes  to  either  physical  science  or  to  current 
theological  systems  the  exclusive  right  to  give  a  complete  and 
final  form  to  their  respective  conceptions  of  this  Reality. 
Moreover,  the  very  terms  which  both  science  and  theology  em- 
ploy for  the  statement  of  their  postulates  and  their  conclusions 
are  greatly  in  need  of  a  more  fundamental  criticism.  "  Laws 
of  nature  "  have  no  meaning  in  a  world  which  is  not  essen- 
tially orderly  and  teleological.  "  Efficient  causes,"  or  whatever 
substitutes  the  most  skillful  scepticism  may  devise  for  this 
complex  notion,  signify  nothing  for  an  exposition  of  facts  that 
does  not  repose  upon  the  experience  of  intelligent  wills.  In- 
deed, the  detailed  and  elaborate  recognition  of  causal  connec- 
tions everywhere  in  the  world,  taking  place  under  so-called 
laws, — this  universal  fact  is  the  cosmological  argument.  "  In- 
telligence endowed  with  will,"  said  Kant,  ''  is  causality."  Bet- 
ter said  :  Will,  realizing  its  own  immanent  ideas, — this  is  what 
physical  science  speaks  of  in  such  terms  as  cause,  law,  relation, 
etc. 

The  Teleological  Argument,  or  Argument  from  Design, 
may  be  said  in  general  to  proceed  from  the  obviously  planful 
nature,  or  orderliness,  of  particular  existences  and  their  rela- 
tions, as  man  has  an  increasing  experience  of  them,  to  the 
conclusion    that   they   all   have  their  Ground  in   One  Mind. 

2  Lindsay,  Recent  Advances  in  Theistic  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  143. 


CUSTOMARY  PROOFS  EXAMINED  55 

From  this  point  of  regard  it  may  be  considered  as  based  upon 
the  self-confidence  of  human  reason  in  its  ability  to  know  the 
cosmical  forces,  existences,  and  laws,  as  they  really  are  and 
actually  operate.     Thus  the  teleological  is  an  extension  of  the 
cosmological  argument ;  and  both  are  supported  by  the  onto- 
logical  postulate  which  underlies  all  forms  of  the  argument. 
On  the  value  of  this  argument  the  judgment  of  the  founder 
of    the    modern  critical  movement  is  well  known.     '^  It  is," 
said  Kant,'  "  the  oldest,  the  clearest,  and  most  in  conformity 
with    human    reason ;  "  and  he  adds   that  it  would  be  "  not 
only  extremely  sad,  but  utterly  vain,  to  attempt  to  diminish 
the  authority  of  that  proof."     Socrates  ^  is  represented  as  giv- 
ing this    argument  naively  when  he  convinces  Aristodemus 
that  "  man  must  be  the  masterpiece  of  some  great  artificer." 
Plato   presents  it  in  detail  in  the  Timseus.     But  Aristotle's 
profounder  view    justifies  us   in  saying  that  tlie  recognition 
which  he  gave  to  the  immanent  end  of  every  object,  and  of 
the  Totality,  made  his  doctrine  of  finality  worthy  to  be  ''  radi- 
cally distinguished  from  the  superficial  utilitarian  teleology  of 
later    philosophers."  ^     Bacon,    the    reputed    founder   of   tlie 
modern  theory  of  the  inductive  method,  declares  in  his  Essay 
on  Atheism  that  when  the  mind  of  man  belioldeth  the  chain 
of  causes  "  confederate  and  linked  together,"  "  it  must  needs 
fly  to  Providence  and  Deity."     The  fact  that  Kant  rejected 
the  claims   of  the  Teleological  Argument  to  *' apodeictic  cer- 
tainty "  need  not  greatly  disturb  those  who  neither  seek  nor 
expect  such  certainty  in  an  argument  for  the  Object   of  reli- 
gions faitli.      And  the   confession — **The  old  arguniunt  from 
design  in  nature,  as  given  ])y  Paley,  which  formerly  seemed  to 
me  so  conclusive,  fails,  now  that  the  law  of  natural  selection 
has  been  discovered  " — is  even  less  disturbintj   for  one  who 

*  Kritik  dcr  Reinen  Vernunft,  in  the  section,  Von  dcr  Unmoglichkeit  dcs 
physiko-thcologischen  lieiveisefi. 

'  Xenophon.   Mcrn.   I,  iv;  comp.   TV,  iii. 

3  For  a  note  on  the  history  of  the  teleological  iirji:umcnt,  see  Flint,  Theism, 
pp.  387/7. 


56  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

has  passed  quite  beyond  the  philosophical  standpoint  of  either 
Paley  or  Darwin. 

The  phrase  "  superficial  utilitarian  teleology "  may  very 
fitly  give  us  our  point  of  starting  for  an  intelligent  appreciation 
of  the  nature,  value,  and  cogency  pf  the  so-called  argument 
from  design.  It  is  an  important  introductory  consideration 
that  the  human  mind  has  always,  and  of  necessity,  made  use 
of  the  teleological  conception  in  finding  its  way  to  a  belief  in 
the  object  of  religious  worship.  That  which  does  not  seem  to 
have  a  mind,  and  at  least  to  some  extent  to  show  its  mind,  can- 
not stir  or  guide  the  religious  nature  of  man.  All  our  histor- 
ical study  of  religion  illustrates  this  statement. 

In  order  not  only  to  reconcile  modern  science  and  philosophy 
with  the  teleological  view  of  the  world,   but  also  to  commit 
them  to  it,  and  to  the  proof  wliich  it  affords  of  the  truth  of 
the  religious  conception  of  the  Divine  Being,  the  teleological 
argument  must,  indeed,  be  apprehended  in  a  generous,  broad- 
minded,  and  magnanimous  fashion   (inan  muss  die  Frage  hn 
grosser  en  Stil  heJiandehi).    For  such  a  treatment  modern  science 
has  prepared  anew  the  way.     Its  very  efforts  to  intensify  and 
to  extend  the  mechanical  conception  of  the  universe,  and,  in 
spite  of  all  its  splendid  success  in  these  efforts,  its  complete 
failure  thus  to  furnish  an  adequate  and  satisfactory  explana- 
tion, have  expanded  and  strengthened  this  argument.     Nowhere 
do  we  find  any  "  dead  mechanism,"  worked  upon,  as  it  were, 
by  blind  forces  that  reside  upon  the  outside.     Even  the  kind 
of  mechanism  which  we  do  find,  and  of  which  the  particular 
sciences  can  make  use  for  a  limited  and  partial  explanation  of 
phenomena,  is  itself  unthinkable   without  an  indwelling  final 
purpose.     What  modern  science  presents  is  a  lively  picture  of 
the  ceaseless,  indescribably  intricate,    and  richly  productive 
Life  of  Nature,  regarded  as  a  system  of  interacting  Things  and 
Selves.     In  this  system  there  is  everywhere  present  an  im- 
manent teleology — a  vast,  complex,  and  all-comprehensive  net- 
work of  final  puiposes. 


CUSTOMARY  PROOFS  EXAMINED  57 

Into  a  detailed  exliibition  of  the  facts  upon  which  the  con- 
ception of  this  universal  "  immanent  teleology  "  relies,  there 
is  the  less  need  to  enter,  because  it  has  been  so  repeatedly  and 
so  fully  made.  The  criticisms  which  have  been  most  recently 
given  to  the  conception  in  its  modern  form  have  abundantly 
shown  its  power  to  adapt  itself  to  such  minor  modifications  as 
the  facts  require,  without  losing  anything  whatever  from  its 
inlierent  impressiveness.  Indeed,  the  greater  number  of  these 
criticisms  scarcely  touch  the  nerve  of  the  argument ;  much 
less  do  they  weaken  or  destroy  it.  For  example,  when  one 
writer^  maintains  that  the  proof  from  the  observed  adaptation 
of  means  to  ends,  to  the  intelligence  which  adapts  them,  is 
either  tautological  or  false,  because  the  very  conception  of  ends 
necessarily  involves  intelligence,  his  objection,  when  examined, 
comes  perilously  near  to  being  a  mere  verbal  quibble.  The 
distinctions,  which  are  then  introduced  in  the  effort  to  substi- 
tute for  this  "  argument  from  design  "  a  so-called  "  eutaxio- 
logical  argument "  based  upon  the  "  reign  of  law,"  are,  for 
the  most  part,  either  superficial  and  unnecessary  or  inconclu- 
sive as  to  the  points  at  issue.  To  establish  for  the  world  of 
human  experience  a  reign  of  law  it  is  necessary  to  deal  with 
the  same  facts  to  which  the  teleological  argument  appeals. 
"  Order  "  and  "  the  reign  of  law  "  everywliere  imply  both 
internal  and  external  relations,  really  existing  and  actually 
effective,  among  the  different  parts  of  the  world's  individual 
beings,  and  also  Ixitween  those  individual  beings  ;  these  rela- 
tions themselves  indicate  that  the  beings  do  in  fact  serve,  or 
oppose,  one  another  as  means  to  the  realization  of  common  or 
of  different  ends.  The  very  conceptions  of  "  Order "  and 
"  Law  "  therefore  involve  the  idea  of  the  adapUition  of  means 
to  ends.  Nor  does  the  proposal  to  sulwtitute  tlie  conception 
of  "  function  "  for  that  of  ''  purpose  "  eitlier  tlirow  any  glare  of 
new  light  upon  the  j)henoniena  or  avail  to  weaken  the  force  of 

»  Ilicka,  Critiijue  of  Deaign  Arguments,  p.  vif. 


58  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  teleological  argument.  For  function,  too,  is  a  fact  from 
which  we  legitimately  infer  a  purposing  mind  ;  just  as  order  is 
a  fact  from  which  we  infer  an  ordering  mind.  And  if  things 
cannot,  without  putting  mind  into  them,  be  conceived  of  as 
ordering  themselves,  or  as  performing  their  several  functions 
properly,  then  surely  they  cannot  without  putting  mind  into 
them,  be  conceived  of  as  adapting  themselves  to  one  another 
with  the  result  of  constituting  a  vast  system  of  apparent  means 
and  ends.  At  this  point,  of  course,  it  is  the  vast  and  even  uni- 
versal extent  of  the  system  which  seems  to  human  reflective 
thinking  to  require  the  Unity  of  one  intelligent  First  Cause. 
Thus  the  teleological  argument  extends  the  cosmological  and 
ontological  arguments. 

The  objections  and  concessions  of  another  critic  may  be  held 
to  affect,  as  little  as  those  of  the  writer  just  noticed,  the  re- 
statement of  the  argument  from  the  observed  "  immanent  tele- 
ology "  of  man's  experienced  world  to  the  Being  of  God  con- 
ceived of  as  Intelligent  Will.  "  The  argument,"  says  this 
critic,^  *'  as  popularly  pursued,  proceeds  upon  the  analogy  of  a 
personal  agent,  whose  contrivances  are  limited,  etc.,  ....  an 
argument  leading  only  to  the  most  unworthy  and  anthropomor- 
phic conceptions."  Yet  we  are  soon  told  that  "  the  satisfactory 
view  of  the  whole  case  can  only  be  found  in  those  more  en- 
larged conceptions  which  are  furnished  by  the  grand  contem- 
plation of  cosmical  order  and  unity,  and  which  do  not  refer  to 
inferences  of  the  past,  but  to  proofs  of  the  ever-present  mind 
iind  reason  in  nature."  And  elsewhere,^  the  critic  of  the  tel- 
eological argument  already  quoted,  does  not  hesitate  to  say : 
"  Tlie  instances  in  which  we  can  trace  a  use  and  a  purpose 
in  nature,  striking  as  they  are,  after  all  constitute  but  a  very 
small  and  subordinate  portion  of  the  vast  scheme  of  universal 
order  and  harmony  of  design  which  pervades  and  connects 

1  Baden  Powell,  Order  of  Nature,  p.  237/. 

2  Baden  Powell,  Unity  of  Worlds  (2d  ed.),  p.  142. 


CUSTOMARY  PROOFS  EXAMINED  59 

the  whole.  Throughout  the  immensely  greater  part  of  nature 
we  can  trace  symmetry  and  arraiigement,  but  not  the  end  for 
which  the  adjustment  is  made." 

Now  the  truth  which  the  modern  developments  of  the  par- 
ticular sciences  are  enforcing  and  illustrating  is  this :  Every- 
where, in  the  large  and  in  the  small,  in  the  parts  of  individual 
things  and  in  the  relations  of  these  things  to  one  another,  in 
the  past  and  in  the  present,  in  the  realm  of  so-called  matter  and 
in  the  realm  of  so-called  mind,  and  as  respects  the  relations  be- 
tween the  two,  there  is  increasingly  manifest  the  evidence  "  of 
universal  order  and  harmony  of  design."  At  the  same  time, 
the  inexplicable  facts,  and  even  the  facts  which  seem  to  con- 
tradict the  universality  of  this  order  and  the  harmony  of  this 
design,  are  greatly  multiplied.  Nevertheless,  the  human  mind, 
working  antliropomorphically  but  ever  more  and  more  after 
the  pattern  of  the  Universal  Reason,  refuses  to  accept  as  final 
that  interpretation  of  such  facts  which  does  not  relate  them, 
too,  to  the  all-ordering  and  all-harmonizing  purposes  of  the 
*'  ever-present  Mind  and  Reason." 

Let  it  be  granted,  then,  that  the  so-called  teleological  argu- 
ment may  more  properly  be  called  ''  the  Argument  from  an 
universal  Order."  Combined,  as  it  always  must  be,  if  it  is  to 
produce  a  rational  conviction,  with  reasoning  from  the  nature 
of  the  effect  to  the  nature  of  the  cause,  and  implying  the 
validity  of  the  ontological  postulate,  the  argument  from  design 
becomes  a  cosmological  argument  in  a  truer,  profounder,  and 
more  complete  form.  It  is  an  argument  from  cosmic  existences, 
processes,  forces,  as  man  has  experience  of  them,  to  the  Being 
of  the  Cosmos  in  respect  of  its  real  nature.  Briefly  stated  it 
runs  thus  :  (1)  Man's  experience  with  the  world  shows,  and 
shows  incrciUsingly,  lus  the  different  positive  sciences  extend 
the  domain  of  liuman  knowledge  and  bring  their  separate  con- 
clusions into  greater  liarmony,  that  IT  is  an  orderly  totility  ; 
(2)  The  proper,  rational,  and  only  satisfactory  explanation  of 
this  general   fact  of  experience  is  the  postulate  of  a  World- 


60  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Ground,  conceived  of  as  an  absolute  Will  and  Intelligence — an 
intelligent  Will,  a  willing  Mind. 

"Among  themselves  all  things 
Have  order;  and  from  hence  the  form  vfhich  makes 
The  Universe  resemble  God." 

At  this  point,  the  purely  negative  and  quite  unthinkable 
conception  of  the  "  Unconscious  "  intervenes.  And  doubtless, 
the  unconscious  for  us  as  individuals  and  for  the  whole  race 
of  men  is  by  far  the  greater  part  of  what  really  is,  and  of  what 
actually  happens.  But  the  "  Unconscious  "  in  general,  em- 
ployed as  an  explanatory  principle  or  as  the  conclusion  of  an 
argument,  is  the  mentally  unpresentable  ;  it  is  the  Unding^  the 
vast,  the  infinite  envelope  of  night,  in  the  center  of  which  floats 
the  expanding  daylight  of  man's  cognitive  strivings  and  cogni- 
tive attainments.  The  same  thing  is  equally  true  of  such  nega- 
tive and  mystical  conceptions  as  are  involved  in  Eckbart's  dis- 
tinction of  "God  and  Godhead,"  which  "differ  as  deed  and 
not-deed ;  "  and  of  all  the  negative  predicates  assigned  to 
the  "Godhead,"  such  as  "non-spirit,"  "non-good,"  "non- 
moral,"  etc. 

Emphatically  true  is  it  that  the  net  result  of  the  various 
theories  of  evolution,  all  of  which  have  tended  to  replace  the 
older  mechanical  conception  of  the  world  with  the  conception 
of  the  physical  Cosmos  as  a  developing  Life,  has  increased 
rather  than  diminished  the  scope  and  the  cogency  of  the  tele- 
ological  argument.  The  Mind  and  Will  which  this  evolution 
of  living  forms  manifests,  indicate  that  the  teleological  principle 
is  so  deeply  bedded  in  the  heart  of  Reality  as  to  make  it  im- 
possible for  any  individual  existence  to  come  actually  to  be, 
or  even  to  be  conceived  of  as  being,  without  an  implied  con- 
formity to  a  plan.  If  biological  evolution  starts,  as  most 
modern  forms  of  the  theory  seem  inclined  to  do,  with  the  funda- 
mental principle  of  variability  assumed  as  a  general  fact  of  all 
life,  and  as  a  resultant  from  the  composite  nature  of  the  germ 
and  the  infinitely  varying  forms  of  its  environment,  then  science 


CUSTOMARY  PROOFS  EXAMINED  61 

must  account  for  the  plan-full,  specific  limitations  of  this  vari- 
ability. The  principle  of  heredity  must  somehow  co-operate, 
and  must  direct  the  variable  along  certain  lines  of  development. 
But  if  biology  start  with  heredity,  and  take  for  granted  all 
that  goes  with  this  principle  in  order  to  secure  a  plan-full 
stability  for  living  forms,  then  it  must  also  discover  some  real 
principle  which  will  account  for  the  obvious  restriction  of  the 
effects  of  inheritance.  Only  in  this  way  can  the  progressive 
order  and  continuity  of  development  in  the  different  genera- 
tions having  the  same  ancestor  be  satisfactorily  explained.  But 
from  whichever  point  of  view  science  takes  its  start,  the  final 
problem  remains  essentially  the  same  ; — namely,  to  get  all  the 
principles  so  adjusted  to  one  another  and  to  common  ends,  that 
the  actual,  observed  history  of  the  development  of  life  on  the  ' 
earth  shall  be  adequately  explained.  And  this  cannot  be  done 
without  the  hypothesis  of  an  immanent  teleology,  an  indwell- 
ing and  ordenng  Mind.  Surely,  in  the  interests  of  every  theory 
of  biological  evolution  we  cannot  say  less,  even  if  we  cannot  say 
more,  than  Weismann  '  has  said  upon  this  point:  *'  I  neverthe- 
less believe  that  there  is  no  occasion  for  this  reason  to  renounce 
the  existence  of,  or  to  disown,  a  directive  Power."  "  Behind 
the  co-operating  forces  of  nature  which  *  aim  at  a  purpose ' 
must  we  admit  a  Cause,  which  is  no  less  inconceivable  in  its 
nature,  and  of  which  we  can  only  say  one  thing  with  certiiinty, 
— viz.,  that  it  must  be  teleological." 

The  cosmological  and  teleological  arguments  so-called  reach 
their  supreme  form  of  expression  in  what  is  denominated,  with 
a  somewhat  loose  and  expansive  signification,  the  "  M(^ral  Ar- 
gument"  for  the  Being  of  God.  In  considering  the  evidence 
of  immanc^nt  final  purpose  wliich  tlie  world-order  shows,  it  is  es- 
pecially important  to  comprehend,  if  possible,  the  teleoloL^^y  of 
man  iiimself,  l)ot]i  of  the  individu:d  and  of  tlie  race.  In  some 
sort,  and  in  spite  of  no  little  confusion  and  nuich  darkness,  the 
Universe  {is  known  to  man  seems  to  liave  realizeil  in  his  pro- 
1  Theory  of  Descent  (ed.  London,  1882),  II,  p.  70S;  712. 


62  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ductiou  and  development  one  of  its  most  obvious  final  pur- 
poses. But  IT  has  made  him  moral  and  capable  of  pronouncing 
judgments  of  value  on  things  and  on  himself  from  the  moral 
point  of  view.  What  sort  of  a  universe  must  *'  IT  "  be,  which 
can  bring  to  actuality  the  moral  being  that  man  certainly 
is? 

According  to  Pfleiderer^  the  moral  argument  falls  into  two 
parts  :  (1)  "  From  the  existence  of  the  absolute  moral  law  in 
our  consciousness  we  arrive  at  God  as  absolute  lawgiver  ;"  and 
(2)  "  for  the  possibility  of  the  realization  of  the  moral  law  in 
the  visible  world,  we  postulate  God  as  absolute  ruler  of  the 
world."  In  one  word,  only  absolute,  or  independent  moral 
Being,  can  serve  as  the  Ground  of  that  ethical  nature  and  eth- 
ical development  which  man  knows  himself  to  have  attained. 
In  a  more  tentative  way  Wundt^  finds  in  human  ethical  ex- 
perience the  proof  of  a  principle  which  seems  to  demand  a 
source  for  itself  that  can  neither  lie  in  the  individual  animal 
or  the  individual  man ;  nor  in  nature,  considered  as  an  un- 
ideal  and  unethical  environment.  How  such  a  principle  can 
be,  "Wundt  thinks  is  "  one  of  the  questions  which  we  shall  in 
all  probability  never  be  able  to  answer."  We  shall  subse- 
quently express  more  in  detail  our  agreement  with  Pfleiderer  in 
thinking  that  the  existence  of  such  a  principle  demands  the 
postulate  of  an  ethical  World-Ground. 

The  so-called  moral  proof,  like  all  the  other  arguments,  is 
not  improved  or  made  more  theoretically  convincing  and  prac- 
tically effective  by  any  of  the  various  attempts  to  throw  it  into 
a  demonstrative  or  intuitive  form.  For  example,  when  one 
author^  affirms,  "  What  we  are  immediately  conscious  of  is, 
that  the  Ultimate  Ground  of  all  reality  is  asserting  itself  in  us, 
and  revealing  to  us  an  objective  norm  of  conduct  which  is  felt 
to  possess  a  universality  and  an  authority  such  as  nothing  fi- 

1  Philosophy  of  Religion,  III,  p.  264/. 

2  Ethics,  I,  p.  130/. 

3  Upton,  Bases  of  Religious  Belief  (Hibbert  Lectures,  1897),  p.  37. 


CUSTOMARY  PROOFS  EXAMINED  63 

nite  or  created  could  originate," — he  is  leaping  at  a  bound  the 
steps  in  the  argument  through  which  the  race  has  slowly 
found  its  way  upward,  in  the  evolution  of  moral  and  religious 
experience.  Neither  can  we  accord  the  verdict  of  success  to 
Kant  for  his  effort,  in  the  "  Critique  of  the  Practical  Reason," 
to  connect  the  conception  of  God  in  a  perfectly  indisputable 
way  with  the  absoluteness  of  the  moral  law,  conceived  of  as  a 
so-called  categorical  imperative.  But  undoubtedly,  as  Schultz 
argues,^  the  teleological  argument  is  greatly  strengthened  by  the 
facts  and  principles  of  man's  moral  life  and  moral  develop- 
ment. "Every  man,"  says  he,  "  who  believes  unconditionally 
in  moral  obligation  has  in  his  heart  an  altar  to  the  unknown 
God."  The  moral  argument  in  truth  puts  the  crown  on  the 
other  forms  of  the  cosmological  and  teleological  arguments. 
But  it  can  do  little  or  nothing  to  overcome  a  determined  agnosti- 
cism or  materialism,  because  the  citadel  in  which  these  views 
entrench  themselves  lies  on  the  other  side  of  the  moral  domain, 
so  to  say.  It  must,  therefore,  be  taken  by  siege  or  by  assault 
before  religious  experience  can  approach  the  discussion  of  prob- 
lems of  an  ethical  sort  in  their  bearing  upon  the  proof  for  the 
Being  of  God.  "  Unless  a  man  really  believes  in  God  on  other 
grounds,"  says  the  Roman  Catholic  writer,  R.  F.  Clarke,'^  "  I 
should  be  very  sorry  to  have  to  convert  him  by  means  of  the 
argument  from  conscience." 

In  the  conceptions  of  Deity  which  are  formed  by  savage  or 
primitive  man,  the  moral  elements  are  either  largely  wanting ; 
or  else  tliey  are  so  uncertain  and  shifty  as  only  sHglitly  to  in- 
fluence his  conduct  or  his  cult.  The  same  gods — whether  con- 
ceived of  as  natural  powers  personified  or  in  a  more  definite 
antliropomorj)hic  fashion — may  1x3  regarded  as  well-<lisposed  or 
ill-disposed  to  the  individual  and  to  the  trilx%  without  calling 
into  question  tlie  purity  of  the  morals,  either  of  themselves  or  of 
their  worshippers.     But  as  the  development  of  man  raises  him 

»  GnindrLsa  dcr  Christlichcn  Apologctik,  p.  SU/. 
'  Existence  of  God,  p.  43. 


64  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

in  the  scale  of  morality,  and  elevates  and  purifies  his  ideas  of 
the  inviolability  of  moral  principles  and  of  the  value  of  moral 
ideals,  it  also  compels  him  to  improve  his  conception  of  God 
as  judged  by  moral  standards. 

The  argument — if  such  it  can  be  called — from  man's  sesthet- 
ical  sentiments  and  ideals  for  the  religious  conception  of  the 
Being  of  the  World  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  is  a  part  of  the  moral 
argument,  in  the  wider  signification  of  the  term.  The  con- 
siderations which  belong  to  this  argument  may  be  presented 
from  two  related  but  not  identical  points  of  view :  (1)  The  stim- 
ulus which  these  sentiments — the  feelings  with  which  man 
greets  his  ideals  of  what  is  admirable,  sublime,  venerable,  or 
mj'sterious,  etc., — furnish  toward  the  belief  in  God ;  and  (2) 
the  stimulus  and  the  shaping  which  tlie  sentiments  and  ideals 
themselves  receive  from  the  conception  of  God.  Evidence  for 
the  existence  of  God,  as  a  Being  fit  to  satisfy  the  higher  reli- 
gious ideals  of  humanity,  cannot  be  obtained  without  taking  the 
facts  of  ethics  and  art  chiefly  into  the  account.  In  some  real 
and  important  way,  then,  it  is  true  that  the  ethical  and  sesthet- 
ical  experience  and  development  of  man  give  God  to  man,  and 
in  themselves  prove  the  rejdity  of  the  God  whom  they  give. 
They  are  forms  of  experience  which  will  never  rest  satisfied  with 
a  view  of  the  cosmos,  and  of  man's  cosmic  relations,  which  re- 
duces him  to  a  merely  dependent  piece  of  a  universal  Mechanism, 
called  "  Nature,"  or  what  you  will.  The  Cosmos  itself  must  be 
interpreted  so  as  to  make  room  for  all  that  is  in  man.  For  who 
is  it  that  interprets  this  cosmos  in  terms,  whether  of  the  cosmo- 
logical,  or  other  forms  of  argument  and  belief  ?  It  is  man  him- 
self. From  this  truly  human  point  of  view,  all  arguments  must 
be  regarded  as  only  fragmentary  parts  of  one  argument ;  and 
that  one  argument  may  properly  be  designated  "  cosmological  " 
— based  however,  on  the  ontological  postulate  which  expresses 
the  confidence  of  the  race  in  its  rational  and  cognitive  develop- 
ment. To  give  up  the  faith  that  man  may  know  the  Being  of 
the  World,  in  a  way,  progressively  the  better  to  satisfy  his  own 


CUSTOMARY  PROOFS  EXAMINED  65 

enlarged  mind,  is  to  adopt  a  discouraging  and  dishonorable  at- 
titude of  scepticism. 

The  Historical  Argument  is  in  no  respect  a  separate  form  of 
evidence,  or  proof,  for  the  Being  of  God.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  all  the  arguments,  in  order  to  be  presented  in  the 
most  convincing  way,  require  the  constant  recognition  of 
the  value  of  historical  studies.  They  themselves  are,  in  their 
present  most  approved  form,  the  results — each  one — of  an 
historical  process.  The  proofs  are  developments,  dependent 
upon  the  growing  experience  of  the  race,  and  upon  its  in- 
creasing ability  to  interpret  and  evaluate  this  experience. 
The  motto  of  this  argument  may  be  stated  in  these  words  of 
Augustine,  which  are  said  to  have  converted  Newman :  Se- 
curas  judicat  orbis  terrarum.  From  another  point  of  view  it 
resolves  itself,  as  evidence,  into  the  objective  side  of  the  psy- 
chological problems  offered  by  the  nature,  origin,  and  develop- 
ment of  rehgions,  as  those  problems  have  already  been  dis- 
cussed. "  Given  man  such  as  he  is,  and  given  the  world  such 
as  it  is,  a  belief  in  divine  beings,  and,  at  last,  in  One  Divine 
Being,  is  not  only  a  universal,  but  an  inevitable  fact."  ^ 

1  See  Max  Miiller,  Anthropological  Religion,  Lecture  IV. 

5 


CHAPTER   XXIX 

THE  ARGUISIENT   EECONSTRUCTED 

The  reflective  mind  cannot  remain  uncritically  "  secure  "  in 
the  judgment  of  the  multitudes  of  mankind  (the  orbis  terrarurri) 
with  regard  to  the  being  and  attributes  of  God.  This  judgment 
may  be  claimed  for  nature-worship  in  some  form,  as  chronolog- 
ically prior  to  Theism ;  or  for  Buddhism,  as  to-day  more 
'*  multitudinous  "  than  Christianity.  '^  Collective  humanity," 
considered  as  the  subject  of  religious  experience,  believes  in 
the  Object  of  religion,  in  God,  in  a  very  confused  and  unsatis- 
factory manner.  The  content  of  its  conception,  "  the  accumu- 
lation of  centuries,"  is  not  such  as  to  make  it  acceptable  "in 
the  raw  "  to  a  cultivated  reason. 

We  have,  indeed,  seen  the  truth  of  the  declaration  that 
*'  The  arguments  in  question  (that  is,  for  the  Being  of  God) 
are  so  fundamental  as  to  have  commended  themselves  to  man 
as  soon  as  he  began  seriously  to  reflect  upon  religion,  and  at 
the  same  time  so  inexhaustible  as  to  admit  of  continued  adap- 
tation to  the  ideas  and  idiosyncrasies  of  every  successive  age." 
But  this  very  declaration  implies  the  claim  that  the  same 
arguments  make  upon  the  human  reason  a  ceaseless  demand 
for  reconstruction.  The  total  proof  will  always  be  an  un- 
finished work.  Its  main  outlines  may  remain,  indeed,  sub- 
stantially unchanged  in  character ;  but  they  are  constantly 
widening  their  scope,  constantly  accumulating  the  content 
with  which  they  are  to  be  filled,  and  constantly  challenging  re- 
newed examination  from  changing  points  of  view.  Indeed, 
the  Reality  corresponding  to  the  conception  of  God  reveals 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  67 

itself  in  no  more  convincing  way  than  through  a  critical  study 
of  the  history  of  man's  religious  development ;  for  this  amply 
proves  that  the  essentials  of  the  conception  endure  through 
all  the  centuries  of  progressive  rectification  which  the  concep 
tion  itself  undergoes. 

Such  a  perpetual  challenge  to  humanity  never  to  give  over 
its  attempt  the  better  to  sound  the  profounder  depths  of  this 
Ideal  of  the  religious  experience,  and  to  discover  more  com- 
prehensively and  surely  what  Reality  sustains  and  validates  its 
development,  is  enforced  by  powerful  social  considerations. 
Life^  in  the  noblest,  broadest,  and  highest  meaning  of  the  term, 
is  impossible  witliout  tliat  attitude  of  filial  piety  toward  the 
Being  of  the  World  which  is  the  very  heart  and  pulse  of  genu- 
ine subjective  religion.  The  social  nature  of  man,  therefore, 
becomes  an  unceasing  stimulus  of  the  demand  for  so-called 
proof  upon  this  subject.  Indifference  is  impossible.  If  I  be- 
lieve, why  argue  with  myself  ?  If  I  do  not  believe,  why  argue 
with  another?  Why  should  men  generally  strive  so  mightily 
to  convince  their  fellows  that  God  is,  or  that  he  is  not?  It  is 
not  my  experience  which  alone  needs  to  be  explained.  It  is 
the  experience  of  the  race,  the  universal  and  typical  experience 
of  mankind.  All  the  rational  and  social  interests  which  belong 
to  humanity  at  large  are  concerned  in  the  constant  inquiry  of 
the  race  for  a  renewed  investigation  of  the  grounds  on  which 
reposes  its  own  undying  faith  in  God. 

On  the  other  liand,  the  history  of  discussion,  as  well  as  the 
nature  of  the  problems  discussed,  warns  us  that  no  individual 
thinker,  however  fruitful  or  bold  his  thinking  may  be,  need 
expect  to  make  any  considerable  contribution  toward  the  an- 
swer to  this  pro})leni  of  the  ages.  At  most  the  individual  can 
only  set  forth  liis  own  view  of  the  particular  considerations 
which  should,  in  liis  judgment,  most  powerfully  iiilluence  the 
men  of  his  own  day  to  a  more  rational  faith  in  tlio  Object  of 
the  universal  religious  experience.  This  work,  like  every 
work  of  thought,  must  be  done  by  tlie  individuid  thinkrr ;  for 


68  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

there  is  no  argument,  either  for  the  display  or  for  the  criticism 
of  any  kind  of  evidence,  which  is  not  some  individuaV s  thought. 

At  this  point  it  is  necessary  to  recall  the  nature  of  the  task 
Avhich  is  before  us  now,  and  which  will  remain  before  us  until 
the  end.  This  task  is  (1)  to  establish  the  Unitary  Being  of 
God  in  such  manner  as  to  meet  the  legitimate  demands  of 
modern  science  and  philosophy ;  and,  at  the  same  time,  (2)  to 
vindicate  and  expound  the  Spirituality  of  this  Being  in  such 
manner  as  to  satisfy  the  higher  sesthetical  and  ethical  senti- 
ments and  ideals,  and  so  to  afford  evidence  for  the  essential 
truth  of  humanity's  religious  experience. 

In  the  accomplishment  of  such  a  task,  no  matter  how  par- 
tially, we  are,  however,  entitled  to  whatever  advantages  flow 
naturally  from  certain  considerations  established  by  our  histor- 
ical and  psychological  studies,  and  by  our  previous  criticism  of 
the  arguments  customarily  proposed.  One  of  these  considera- 
tions is  the  necessity  of  combining  the  historical  and  the  phil- 
osophical methods.  But  as  says  D'Alviella  '}  "  These  methods 
do  not  exclude  each  other ;  nay,  each  finds  in  the  other  its  nec- 
essary supplement."  The  rather  is  it  true  that  these  methods 
represent  different  aspects  of  the  one  rational  movement  of  the 
race  in  its  effort  to  attain  and  to  justify  a  satisfying  faith  in  God. 

When  the  inquiry  is  raised.  What  conception  of  God,  if  it 
can  be  established  by  evidence,  whether  of  the  indisputable  or 
of  the  probable  sort,  would  best  meet  the  intellectual,  ethical, 
gesthetical^  and  social  needs  of  men  ?  a  tolerably  sure  clue  to 
the  right  answer  is  found  in  the  nature  and  development  of 
the  religious  experience  of  the  race.  There  is  undoubted 
truth  in  the  observation  of  Pascal,^  that  different  minds  both 

1  Origin  and  Growth  of  the  Conception  of  God,  p.  vii. 

2  Pensees,  Partie  I,  art.  x,  sec.  33:  "Ceux  qui  sont  accoutum^s  a  juger 
par  le  sentiment  ne  comprennent  rien  aux  choses  de  raisonnement;  car  lis 
veulent  d'abord  p^n^trer  d'une  vue,  et  ne  sont  point  accoutum^s  a  chercher 
les  principes.  Et  les  autres,  au  contraire,  qui  sont  accoutum^s  a  raisonner 
par  principes,  ne  comprennent  rien  aux  choses  de  sentiment,  y  cherchant 
des  principes,  et  ne  pouvant  voir  d'une  vue." 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  69 

approach  and  estimate  the  truth  of  this  conception  in  quite 
different  ways.  Inasmuch,  however,  as  the  religious  experience 
of  the  race — religion  when  considered  subjectively — includes 
activities  and  attitudes  of  thought,  of  feeling,  and  of  the  life 
of  conduct,  the  Object  toward  whicli,  considered  as  a  Reality, 
this  experience  is  directed,  must  necessarily  assume  a  form  to 
correspond  with  the  subjective  experience.  It  is  desirable  at 
once,  then,  to  define  clearly  in  the  interests  of  critical  and  re- 
flective thinking,  tlie  goal  which  it  is  intended  to  reach.  This 
is  the  conclusion  that  the  World-Ground  may  reasonahly  he  con- 
ceived  of  as  personal,  and  perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  Tlie  many 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  such  a  conclusion  must,  indeed,  be 
candidly  and  thoroughly  examined.  But  to  forejudge  the 
conclusion  by  warning  us  that  "  we  must  not  fall  down  and 
worship  as  the  source  of  our  life  and  virtue,  the  image  which 
our  own  minds  have  set  up; "  and  to  ask,  "  Why  sucli  idolatry 
is  any  better  than  that  of  the  old  wood  and  stone?"  is  to  re- 
treat before  the  struggle,  and  fall  back  upon  the  otiose  and 
unreasonable  positions  of  a  worn-out  dogmatic  agnosticism. 
"  The  image  which  our  own  minds  set  up  "  is  our  only  stiindard 
of  any  form  of  truth,  our  only  medium  of  commerce  with  reality. 
Man  does  fall  down  and  worship  such  an  image;  this  is  one  of 
the  very  things  cliiefly  to  be  accounted  for.  But  that  other 
image  which  takes  its  name  from  metaphysical  babblings  simi- 
lar to  those  of  the  psuedo-Dionysius  wlien  he  characterizes 
Deity  as  "Super-essential  Indetermination,  supra-rational  Unity, 
super-essential  Essence,  tlie  Alxsolute  No-Thing  al)ove  all  exist- 
ence," is  quite  as  much  comparable  to  "  old  wood  and  stone  " 
as  are  the  idol  gods  of  the  most  intellectually  degraded  races. 
Since  the  conception  of  pei-sonality,  as  well  {is  the  concep- 
tion of  Divine  Being,  has  been  and  still  is  subject  to  a  process 
of  development,  the  effort  to  combine  the  two  into  a  self- 
consistent  and  barnionious  idea,  such  as  that  which  is  covered 
by  the  term  "  personal  AKsoluto,"  must  also  l)e,  for  its  per- 
fection  and  nitionality,  so  to  say,   dependent  upon  develop- 


70  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ment.  In  religion  the  conception  of  God  as  perfect  Ethical 
Spirit  marks  the  highest  point  hitherto  reached  by  one  form  of 
the  evolution  of  mankind.  In  philosophy,  so  far  as  philosopliy 
deals  with  the  fundamental  problem  proposed  by  this  concep- 
tion, its  chief  difficulties  of  the  more  strictly  logical  order  con- 
cern the  Idea  to  be  subsumed  under  such  a  term  (/.  e.^  personal 
Absolute).  In  order  to  overcome  these  difficulties  two  things 
must  be  made  to  appear : — First,  that  the  conception  of  Per- 
sonality, or  self-conscious  Spirit,  is  not  necessarily  limited  from 
without, — ah-extra,  as  it  were  ;  that  it  is,  on  the  contrary,  the 
one  positive  standpoint  (or  BlickpunkV)  from  which  all  con- 
crete realities  and  actual  relations  are  necessarily  regarded ; 
and  that,  when  thought  out  in  its  most  essential  and  highest 
form,  it  is  a  s^/Z-limiting  and  se{/'-consistent  conception.  But, 
second,  it  must  also  be  made  to  appear  that  the  Absoluteness 
of  God  is  not  annulled,  but  the  rather  enriched,  confirmed  to 
thought,  and  made  intelligible,  by  the  system  of  particular  and 
individual  beings  in  which  He  is  immanent,  and  through  which 
He  manifests  himself.  Thus,  in  some  sort,  the  problem  for  the 
philosophy  of  religion  becomes,  not  so  much  whether  God  ex- 
ists or  not,  as  what  is  the  Nature  of  the  Ultimate  Reality. 
And  the  best  possible  solution  of  this  problem  is  attained,  if 
we  are  warranted  in  conceiving  of  this  Reality  as  the  Ground 
of  all  that  we  hold  true  in  science,  of  all  that  we  admire  in  art, 
of  all  that  we  esteem  most  worthy  in  morals  ;  and,  as  well,  as 
the  valid  Object  of  religious  belief  and  worship. 

The  logical  process  of  constructing,  on  the  basis  of  man's 
total  and  ever-developing  experience,  the  conception  of  the 
Ultimate  Reality,  or  World- Ground,  as  an  Absolute  Person, 
while  this  process  in  some  sort  constitutes  a  unity  of  argu- 
ment, cannot  claim  for  all  parts  of  itself  an  equally  convincing 
kind  or  amount  of  evidence.  Especially  is  this  true  when  the 
attempt  is  made  to  incorporate  into  the  conception  those  ethi- 
cal and  sesthetical  elements  which  are  most  important  and  dear  to 
the  religious  consciousness.     It  is  comparatively  easy  to  show 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  71 

that  all  such  categories  as  Force,  Cause,  Relation,  and  the  more 
complex  categories  of  Law,  Matter,  Nature,  etc.,  imply  for  the 
human  mind  One  Absolute  Will  and  Mind  as  constituting  the 
Ground  of  that  system  of  things  and  of  finite  selves  of  which  man 
has  experience.  Certain  metaphysical  predicates,  all  of  which 
speak  in  terms  that  are  meaningless  as  applied  to  beings  devoid 
of  self-consciousness,  may  also  be  inferred.  But  at  the  point 
where  this  conclusion  from  the  data  of  experience  to  the 
rational  conception  of  a  World-Ground,  as  Will  and  Mind, 
meets  the  objections  derived  from  the  category  of  srlf-con- 
seiousnesSy  the  difficulties  of  reconciling  the  absoluteness  of 
God  with  his  personality  culminate  in  a  way  to  demand  a  more 
searching  analysis.  It  is,  however,  where  reflective  thinking 
seeks  to  ascril^e  the  perfection  of  so-called  moral  attributes 
to  the  World-Ground,  that  the  difficulties  become  most  per- 
plexing and  acute.  For  at  this  point  the  dark  problem  of  evil 
seems  to  block  the  path  of  reason.  And,  indeed,  this  blocking 
is  effectual,  unless  it  can  be  agreed  to  expand  the  scope  of  so- 
called  "  reason, "  and  at  the  same  time  to  throw  tlie  weight  of 
the  argument  over  upon  certain  other  aspects  of  human  experi- 
ence. Ilence,  while  tlie  candid  investigator  might  be  able  to 
say  that  he  knotvs  the  sum-total  of  the  experience  of  the  race  is 
best  explained  by  reference  to  the  unitary  principle  of  one 
intelligent  Will,  lie  would  conform  liis  language  to  his  mental 
attitude  better  if  he  only  claimed  that  there  seem  to  be  good 
reasons  for  his  faith  in  the  moral  and  spiritual  perfection  of 
God. 

In  all  that  movement  of  reason,  by  which  it  seeks  grounds 
for  a  l)elief  in  God,  it  is  important  to  keep  the  tt»achings  of 
history  in  view.  Tlie  admonition  to  do  this  has  already  been 
several  times  repeat^^'d.  It  is  history  which  supplies  us  with 
the  knowledge  of  certiiin  of  the  more  constant  elements  in 
man's  conception  of  Deity.  These  elements,  by  virtue  of  their 
very  constiincy,  have  a  peculiar  claim  upon  the  student  of  the 
philosophy  of  religion.     They  may  be  grouped  under   the    fob 


72  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

lowing  two  heads  :  The  "  root-conception,"  always  found  on 
digging  down  into  human  consciousness,  is  the  super-humanity 
of  God.  This  conception  must  not,  liowever,  be  confused 
with  that  of  the  super-natural ;  much  less  with  the  belief  that 
the  Divine  Being  is  so  above  man  as  to  be  unknowable  or  in- 
communicable by  way  of  relations  of  thought,  feeling,  or  will. 
In  power,  majesty,  control  over  the  conditions  of  space,  time, 
and  causation,  in  wisdom,  justice,  and,  finally,  in  goodness  and 
purity,  the  Divine  is  to  be  esteemed  as  more  than  human.  At 
the  same  time,  and  as  the  complement  of  the  elements  just 
enumerated,  the  likeness  of  God  and  man  is  somehow  or  other, 
always  either  tacitly  assumed  or  openly  advocated.  Such  a 
likeness  is  the  only  conceivable  basis  on  which  any  degree  or 
kind  of  communion  between  the  two  can  take  place.  "  That 
God  is  a  Spirit  is,  in  brief,"  says  Tiele,^  "the  creed  of  man 
throughout  all  ages  :  and  religious  man  feels  the  need  of  as- 
cribing to  God  in  perfection  all  the  attributes  he  has  learned 
to  regard  as  the  highest  and  noblest  in  his  own  sjjirit." 

We  shall  now  sketch  in  barest  outline  the  argument  for  the 
religious  conception  of  the  Being  of  the  World  as  it  presents 
itself  in  the  light  of  modern  science  and  philosophy,  and  of 
modern  life,  leaving  to  subsequent  chapters  the  work  of  com- 
pleting the  details,  especially  at  those  places  where  difficulty 
and  dispute  chiefly  arise. 

"  Does  the  world  explain  itself,  or  does  it  lead  the  mind 
above  and  beyond  itself  ?  "  ^  Science,  philosophy,  and  religion, 
all  have  their  birth  in  the  negative  answer  to  this  question. 
In  some  sort,  unless  we  assume  that  things  and  selves,  as  they 
appear  to  the  senses  under  the  conditions  of  space  and  time, 
are  not  self-explanatory,  neither  science,  nor  philosophy,  nor 
religion,  could  even  come  into  existence.^  But  all  tliree — 
religion,  science,  and,  especially,  philosophy — have  been  con- 

1  Elements  of  the  Science  of  Religion,  Second  Series,  p.  103. 

2  So  Professor  Flint,  Theism,  p.  12. 

sComp.  Deussen,  AUgemeine  Geschichte  d.  Philosophic,  I,  ii,  p.  204/. 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  73 

stantly  placing  upon  surer  and  broader  convictions  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  World's  Unity  as  presented  in  all  these  forms  of 
human  experience.  The  path  of  the  progress  of  each  of  the 
three  is  indeed  strewn  with  hasty  and  over-confident  generali- 
zations. The  various  subordinate  unities,  whether  they  are 
known  as  related  species  of  things,  or  as  those  more  or  less 
uniform  ways  of  the  behavior  of  things  which  we  call  laws, 
have  often  enough  been  misapprehended.  Thus  it  is  essential 
to  progress  that  the  old  unities  should  be  reduced  to  their  con- 
stituent elements  and  new  conceptions  should  be  formed.  But 
all  the  while  there  has  been  an  increasing  conviction,  supported 
by  an  accumulating  mass  of  evidence,  as  to  some  sort  of  a  Uni- 
tary Being  belonging  to  the  manifold  varied  and  incessantly 
changing  complex  of  existences  and  events.  Indeed,  all  the 
terms  in  which  the  growth  of  any  kind  of  knowledge  expresses 
itself  signify  man's  undying  confidence  in  this  truth.  In 
some  sort,  the  many  are  connected ;  they  are  in  a  system  ;  tliey 
constitute  a  cosmos  ;  there  is  a  "  reign  of  law*' ;  there  is  a 
real  order  underlying  tlie  apparent  confusion ;  tlie  world  of 
man's  experience  Ls  undergoing  a  process  of  interdependent 
evolution.  The  Being  of  the  World  is  One ;  or  at  least,  it  is 
on  its  way  to  becoming  One. 

That  this  conception  of  tlie  unitary  Being  of  the  World  is 
a  pleasing  and  helpful  postulate  for  all  the  particular  sciences, 
there  is  no  necessity  to  prove.  That  the  conception  corresponds 
to  the  reality,  the  achievements  of  science  tend  either  to  assume 
with  more  confidence  or  to  show  with  an  incrciising  amount  of 
evidence.  In  man's  religious  development  we  have  already  seen 
what  powerful  forces  have  been  successfully  at  work  to  compel 
his  mind  to  the  l>elief  in  one  (iod  rather  than  in  indefinitely 
many  gods.  Even  in  the  case  of  the  ancient  Egyptians  wlio, 
as  Renouf  affirms,'  j»robably  saw  no  inconsistency  in  holding 
at  one  and  the  siime  time  the  doctrine  of  many  gods  and  One 
God,  there  was  evolved  the  conception  expressed — in  however 
1  The  Religion  of  Ancient  Egypt,  p.  96. 


74  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

esoteric  form — in  the  hymn  to  Amon  Ra  :  "  The  ONE,  Maker 
of  all  that  is  ;  the  One,  the  only  One,  the  Maker  of  existences." 

Philosophy  may  then  appeal  to  both  science  and  religion,  and 
may  base  its  appeal  upon  the  achievements  in  development  of 
both,  when  it  claims  that,  either  in  the  course  of  argument  or 
in  the  form  of  a  postulate,  some  one  real  Principle  must  be 
arrived  at  which  shall  assist  in  explaining  the  unitary  nature 
of  our  experience  with  the  manifold  world  of  things  and  of 
men. 

This  explanatory  Principle  must  be  not  merely  logical  but 
real ;  it  must  be  believed  in,  or  known,  as  having  an  existence 
independent  of  the  constructive  activity  of  human  imagination 
and  human  thinking.  It  must  serve  as  the  Ground,  both  of 
these  activities  and  of  the  objects  which  they  construct.  To 
use  the  abstract  and  often  misleading,  but  expressive  term  of 
the  Hegelian  philosophy,  it  must  have  its  "  Being-in-itself." 
And  this  real  principle  must  be  One.  It  must  have  some  unity 
in  reality.  Since  the  world  of  fact  and  law  is  constantly  re- 
vealing itself  in  human  experience  as  more  and  more  an  inter- 
connected whole,  tlie  real  Being  which  explains  this  whole  in 
a  fundamental  way,  must  also  be  conceived  of  as  a  unifying 
actus.  It  is  the  Unitary  Being  of  this  principle  which  accounts 
for  the  interconnection  and  orderly  relations  of  the  world  of 
man's  varied  experiences. 

When,  however,  such  metaphysical  abstractions  as  the  fore- 
going are  examined,  it  soon  becomes  obvious  how  unsatisfac- 
tory, if  left  in  their  abstractness,  they  are  to  account  for  the 
manifold,  vital,  and  intensely  real,  concrete  facts  of  daily  life. 
In  spite,  however,  of  this  dissatisfaction  which  philosophy 
shares  with  common  sense  and  with  popular  feeling,  let  us 
call  for  the  present  that  Unitary  Being  which  is  to  serve  as  a 
real  explanatory  Principle  of  these  varied  facts,  by  the  title  of 
"  The  World-Ground."  Such  a  term  has  confessedly  an  un- 
couth structure  and  harsh  acoustic  properties  ;  but  it  is,  per- 
haps, as  well  fitted  as  any  other  to  express  the  conclusion  of 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  75 

the  present  moment  in  the  argument.  For,  (1)  it  is  imper- 
sonal ;  (2)  it  nevertheless  expresses  some  sort  of  a  unity  ;  and 
(3)  it  indicates  some  sort  of  a  real  relation,  a  vital  and  pro- 
ductive connection,  between  our  experience  of  the  world  and 
the  explanatory  principle  which  we  seek. 

It  was  Schopenhauer  who  more  clearly  than  any  other  modern 
philosopher  brought  forward  a  thought  which,  after  all,  is 
necessarily  regulative  of  all  the  attempts  to  explain  experience 
that  depend  upon  the  belief  in,  or  knowledge  of,  a  World- 
Ground.  No  conception  can  explain  this  experience  that  does 
not  incorporate  in  itself  our  human  but  fundamental  idea  of 
causative  activity.  The  World-Ground  cannot  serve  as  a  real 
and  unitary  princijjle  imless  It  is  itself  conceived  of  as  Will. 
This  contention  may  be  argued  in  the  light  of  the  psychologi- 
cal study  of  that  universal  experience  from  which  man  derives 
all  his  categories  of  Force,  Power,  Energy,  Cause ; — and  what- 
ever other  conceptions  seem  necessary  to  distinguish  being 
from  non-being,  doing  from  not-doing,  life  from  death.  It  is 
in  this  knowledge  of  himself  as  essentially  an  active  will  that 
man  finds  tlie  warrant  for  all  these  categories  as  he  applies 
them  to  external  things.  The  application  is,  indeed,  made  as 
a  kind  of  fundamental  anthro{)omorphism.  But  it  entei*s  into 
all  knowledge  ;  and  without  it  nothing  can  be  known  to  act  or 
even  to  be.' 

The  same  conclusion  may  be  argued  on  the  authority  of 
modern  science.  Tlie  conceptions  wliich  it  lias  embodied  in 
the  so-<.'alled  law  of  tlje  conservation  and  coiTelation  of  energy 
are  in  evidence  here.  This  ''  energy  "  of  the  Being  of  the 
World  aj)i)Oars  to  scientific  insight  more  and  more  of  a  kind  to 
bring  into  orderly  connections  and  sequences  all  the  separate 
manifcistations  of  energy,  wlictlicr  tliese  manifestations  are 
iocaUul,  so  to  say,  in  selves  or  in  things.  To  i)e  sure,  no  one 
specific  kind  of  energizing,  and   no  one  established  formuhi  to 

•  Thi.s  truth  in  shown  in  detail  thruu^hout  the  jiuthor's  treatujca  on  tlie 
"Philosophy  of  Knowletl^ce"  hihI  "A  Tlioory  of  Reahty." 


76  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

express  the  reLations  of  the  different  centers  of  energy  has 
been  discovered  hitherto.  Moreover,  any  expression  for  the 
dynamic  relations  which  seem  to  be  maintained  between  selves 
and  things  is  as  yet  a  formula  so  hidden,  if  indeed  it  exist  in 
reality  at  all,  that  the  mind  can  scarcely  imagine  words  in 
which  such  an  expression  could  be  framed.  Still  further,  the 
behavior  of  radio-active  substances,  and  other  physical  phenom- 
ena, as  well  as  the  growing  tendency  to  look  on  psychoses 
themselves  as  active  forces,  and  the  difficulties  of  reconciling 
so  static  a  conception  as  the  "  conservation  of  energy  "  offers 
with  the  evidences  that  the  World  is  an  evolving  Life,  are  just 
now  shaking  the  confidence  of  the  thoughtful  in  the  finality 
and  supremacy  of  the  scientific  conception  of  Energy  as  a  uni- 
fying principle.  Still  the  positive  sciences  cling,  and  very 
properly  cling,  to  their  determination  to  regard  the  separate 
forces  as  somehow  resolvable  into  different  forms  of  the  mani- 
festation of  that  which  is  essentially  One.  To  fill  the  abstract 
and  barren  conception  of  One  Force  with  a  vital  experience 
we  are  obliged  to  refer  to  the  unifying  actus  of  a  single  Will.^ 

In  some  form  the  reflections  of  philosophy  have,  from  time 
immemorial,  virtually  endowed  the  Being  of  the  World  Avith 
that  capacity  for  causal  energy  which  man  knows  in  himself 

1  A  careful  analysis  of  any  of  those  terms  in  which  modern  science  attempts 
to  summarize  its  views  as  to  the  nature  of  that  substantial  and  ultimate 
unity  in  which  it  wishes  to  ground  all  its  explanations  of  physical  phenomena 
will  illustrate  this  statement.  According  to  a  recent  writer  the  latest  con- 
clusions as  to  what  is  known  about  this  unity  may  be  summarized  as  follows: 
'^ Ether  under  strain  constitutes  'charge';  ether  in  locomotion  constitutes 
current  and  magnetism;  ether  in  vibration  constitutes  light.  What  ether 
itself  is  we  do  not  know,  but  it  may,  perhaps,  be  a  form  or  aspect  of  matter. 
Now  we  can  go  one  step  further  and  say:  Matter  is  composed  of  ether  and 
nothing  else."  [Address  by  Professor  Edward  L.  Nichols  on  "The  Funda- 
mental Concepts  of  Physical  Science."  before  the  International  Congress  at 
St.  Louis;  see  Popular  Science  Monthly,  Nov.  1904,  p.  62.]  The  "in-itself" 
being  of  this  Ether,  out  of  which  Matter  in  the  different  forms  of  its  manifes- 
tation and  activity  is  composed,  so  far  as  it  is  known  or  knowable  is  stata- 
ble only  in  terms  of  Will  and  Mind. 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  77 

as  his  will.  On  the  basis  of  that  irresistible  experiential  proof 
to  which  we  have  already  referred,  man  believes  that  such  car 
pacity,  altliough  limited  and  subject  to  development,  is  the 
fundamental  thing  with  himself.  It  is  the  very  core  of  his 
being,  to  will.  So  must  it  be,  according  to  the  testimony  of 
the  world's  reflective  tliinkers,  after  an  enlaiged  and  more 
mysterious  fashion,  with  the  Being  of  the  World.  With  Plato 
the  Good  was  conceived  of  as  a  fountain  of  quenchless  and  ex- 
haustless  energy.  Witli  Aristotle  the  Prime  Mover  was  the 
responsible  agent  for  the  changes  of  which  men's  senses  and 
reasonings  took  account.  With  Kant  the  Ultimate  Reality  was 
personal  Will.  And  Hegel's  "Thought"  is  no  passive  entity 
or  merely  abstract  arrangement  of  dead  categories  ;  it,  too,  is 
the  energizing  of  a  self-revealing  Will. 

Although  we  have  no  experience  from  which  to  derive  a  con- 
tent that  shall  give  the  conception  of  the  World-Ground  its 
right  to  exist  as  an  explanatory  principle,  which  does  not  re- 
fer to  the  core  of  its  reality  as  an  actual  energizing,  the  con- 
ception of  mere  Will  is  quite  inadequate.  It  is  both  too  meagre 
and  too  abstract.  Just  as  our  experience  is  not  an  experience 
of  things  and  minds  merely  acting  and  interacting,  so  its  ex- 
planatory Principle  cannot  be  a  mere  Being  of  the  World  con- 
ceived of  after  the  analogy  of  Will.  Order  and  adaptation — 
as  the  so-called  cosmological  argument  has  already  been  justi- 
fied in  asserting — imply  that  the  syntheses  of  Will  which 
everywhere  abound  must  l)e  directed  by  Mind.  Order  and 
adaptation  are  facts.  They  are  facts  which  require  co-openiting 
energies  that  are  sonuihow  converged,  as  it  were,  upon  the  at- 
tiinment  of  an  end.  Such  is  the  comprehensive  conohision  of 
the  so-called  cosinolo'^ical  and  tclcolotrical  view  of  the  world, 
from  the  iK'ginning  of  human  reflccHion  down  to  tlie  present 
tiiiu.'.  Wt»  have  alicady  seen  (pp.  i')  f}'.^  that  tlu'  nature  of  the 
argument  has  not  changed  essentially,  from  first  to  hist.  E.ssen- 
tially  considered,  it  cannot  change.  Wht'ii  the  world  of  man's 
experience  waa  conceived  of  as  "  dead  matter,"  ;i8  a  macliine 


78  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

moved  upon  by  forces  from  without,  the  Mind  which  it  dis- 
played, and  on  which  it  depended  for  its  forms  and  laws,  was  lo- 
cated ah-extra,  and  operated  upon  it  from  afar,  as  it  were, — 
albeit  through  subordinate  agencies  and  secondary  causes  and 
intermediary  existences.  When,  however,  the  subtler  concep- 
tion of  a  mechanism,  molecular  and  atomic,  had  supplanted 
the  coarser  notion  of  a  world  made  like  a  machine,  the  intel- 
ligent Will,  the  willing  Mind,  was  conceived  of  as  interpenetrat- 
ing and  immanent  in  every  detail  of  the  world's  beings  and 
doings.  Yet  subtler  is  that  more  modern  conception  of  the 
world  which  likens  it  to  an  indwelling  and  unfolding  Life. 
With  this  conception.  Mind  becomes,  not  only  that  intelligent 
force  which  makes  things  so  to  exist  that  human  beings  can 
apprehend  and  understand  them,  but  also  that  explanatory  Prin- 
ciple which  gives  the  warrant  to  assert  that  things  themselves 
are  manifestly  all  informed  with  mental  life. 

For  centuries  astronomy  afforded  both  the  most  influential 
line  of  thinking  along  which  men  were  carried  from  mytholog- 
ical nature-worship  toward  theistic  views,  and  also  the  most 
impressive  argument  for  the  Being  of  God.  Of  Confucius* 
use  of  the  vague  term  "  Heaven,"  which  he  employed  to  win 
the  people  from  idolatry.  Dr.  Martin  affirms  :^  "  He  ascribed  to 
the  object  of  his  reverence  more  of  personality  than  they  (his 
followers  of  to-day)  are  willing  to  admit."  In  the  Chinese  con- 
ception, Heaven  has  always  possessed  certain  indwelling  ca- 
pacities of  will  and  mind.  The  modern  sciences  of  chemistry, 
physics,  and  biology — especially  the  latter  with  its  microscopic 
investigation  of  the  evolution  of  cell-structure  and  cell-growth — 
directs  our  attention  the  rather  to  that  immanent  Life  of  the 
world,  whom  religion  worships  as  the  "  living  and  life-giving 
God."  On  the  level  of  the  chemico-physical  sciences,  this 
thought  is  put  into  realistic  and  highly  figurative  language  by 
a  celebrated  writer  on  physics,  when  he  says  :^  "  The  atoms  are 

1  The  Lore  of  Cathay,  p.  43. 

2  Life  of  James  Clerk  Maxwell,  p.  39L 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  79 

a  very  tough  lot,  and  can  stand  a  great  deal  of  knocking  about, 
and  it  is  strange  to  find  a  number  of  them  combining  to  form  a 
man  of  feeling."  And  again  :^  "  I  have  looked  into  most  phil- 
osophical systems,  and  I  have  seen  that  none  will  work  without 
a  God." 

This  vitalistic  view  of  Nature  as  implying  an  indwelling 
Mind  and  Will  is  a  return,  in  the  name  of  science  and  in  vastly 
improved  and  more  profoundly  significant  form,  to  the  same 
point  of  view  from  which  so  much  of  religious  belief  and  prac- 
tice took  its  rise.  In  this  connection  it  should  be  noticed 
that  tliose  categories  under  which  all  scientific  research,  and 
all  the  expositions  of  the  sciences,  relate  their  discovered  phe- 
nomena, imply  essentially  the  same  conclusion.  Causation 
means  nothing  intelligible  unless  it  means  active  will  endowed 
with  intelligence.  Bare  Cause,  mere  Force  or  Energy,  causes 
and  forces  and  kinds  of  energy  that  are  not  directed  toward 
some  end,  are  not  only  inconceivable  as  having  place  in  a  sys- 
tem of  existences,  but  they  also  are  quite  unable  to  effect  the 
reality  of  such  a  system. 

If,  then,  God  is  to  be  known  or  knowable  as  the  Ground  of 
tlie  World,  it  cannot  be  as  bare  Will,  or  as  unconditioned  Pri- 
mal Cause,  or  as  mere  and  indefinite  Principle  of  existence. 
For  the  world  itself,  as  known  or  knowable,  is  not  a  mere 
"  lump,"  so  to  say,  of  existences  and  occurrences ;  nor  do  its 
existences,  forces,  and  so-called  causes,  operate  upon  each  other, 
or  stand  together  in  the  totiility  of  the  world,  in  an  undefined, 
unclassifiable,  unspecialized  way.  This  is  to  say  that  '* causes" 
are  always,  and  of  their  veiy  nature,  teleological.  They  serve 
their  own  and  one  anotlier's  ends.  God  is  the  Ground  of  the 
co-oi>eration  of  existences  and  causes  to  whatsoever  ends  are — 
wliether  we  can  discover  what  they  are,  or  not — actually  IxMJig 
fulfilled.  As  I  have  elsewhere  said,*'  in  conclusion  of  a  deUiiled 
discussion  of  the  conceptions  involved :  *'  This  is,  indeed,  just 

»  Ibid.,  p.  426. 

>  A  Theory  of  Reality,  p.  360. 


80  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

what  a  '  principle  of  causation  '  necessarily  means —  Will  energiz- 
ing in  conformity  to  ideal  forms  and  aims.^^ 

On  the  one  hand,  then,  this  One  Will,  the  Will  of  God,  is 
not  something  apart  from,  or  wholly  beside  and  above,  the 
many  finite  and  concrete  centers  of  energy — human  wills  and 
willing  things,  considered  as  relatively  independent  centers  of 
activity,  which  by  their  co-operating  bring  about  the  manifesta- 
tion of  the  One  Will  of  God.  Or  as  Professor  Royce  has 
forcefully  but  not  quite  adequately  stated  the  case :  ^  "  The 
Divine  Will  is  simply  that  aspect  of  the  Absolute  which  is  ex- 
pressed in  the  concrete  and  differentiated  individuality  of  the 
World."  But,  on  the  other  hand,  God  as  Will  is  not  mere 
undifferentiated  Power ;  in  order  to  "  get  his  will  done,"  this 
infinite  Power  must  be  translated  into  many  finite  powers. 
The  forms  and  laws  of  the  translation,  as  we  actually  see  it 
constantly  going  on  in  the  processes  of  so-called  Nature,  im- 
plies the  immanent  presence  of  Mind.  Thus  much  at  least  is 
demonstrably  true. 

It  is  enough  at  this  stage  of  the  argument  to  say,  that  the 
very  words  and  formulas  which  man  is  obliged  to  use  in  all  his 
attempts  to  construct  a  scientific  and  systematic  interpretation 
of  his  experience,  shows  him  to  be  obliged  to  conceive  of  the 
Ground  of  it  all  as  an  ordering  and  designing  Will,  or  Mind. 
But  other  experiences  enable  us  to  consider  this  Divine  Will 
as  rising  above  the  blind  strivings  and  desires  which  the  phe- 
nomena of  nature  exhibit,  and  lead  our  thought  beyond  the  more 
definite  specializations  of  energy,  its  kinds  and  laws,  with  which 
the  particular  sciences  make  us  familiar,  upward  to  the  con- 
ception of  moral  will  as  choice ;  and  this  moral  will,  blended 
with  emotion,  is  the  Divine  Love  and  the  precondition  of  the 
Divine  Blessedness. 

The  argument  for  the  Being  of  God  still  remains,  however, 
in  the  region  of  inadequate  abstractions.  May  this  Mind-Will 
be  conceived  of  as  a  self-conscious  personal  Life,  an  Absolute 

iThe  Conception  of  God,  p.  202/. 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  81 

Self  in  the  supremest  meaning  possible  for  these  words  ?  At 
this  point  the  argument  undoubtedly  begins  to  grapple  with 
the  objections  of  those  who  will  go  only  so  far  as  Schopenhauer 
and  Hartmann,  and  many  others  both  in  ancient  and  modern 
times  have  gone.  If  it  stops  here,  however,  it  rests  in  such  a 
largely  negative  and  abstract  conception  of  the  Divine  Being 
as  has  seemed  sufficient  to  Bralimanical  and  Buddhistic  phi- 
losopy,  to  most  of  what  is  called  Pantheism  in  Western  think- 
ing, and  to  not  a  little  of  both  ancient  and  modern  Christian 
mysticism.  But  it  fails  eitlier  to  explain  or  to  satisfy  the  de- 
mands of  the  religious  consciousness,  both  psychologically  and 
historically  considered  ;  and  it  denies  or  minimizes  the  onto- 
logical  value  of  the  Object  of  religious  faith  and  worship,  con- 
ceived of  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  and  so  as  the  Father  and 
Redeemer  of  the  race.  We  must,  tlien,  in  spite  of  defects  in 
the  cogency  of  the  argument  we  are  following,  and  of  obstacles 
from  counter-arguments,  accept  still  further  the  leadership  of 
the  history  of  the  race  in  its  religious  experience  and  religious 
development.  It  may  well  be  that  we  shall  discover  that  both 
science  and  philosophy,  if  not  wholly  able  to  accept  and  sub- 
stiintiate  the  convictions  of  religion,  are  at  least  unable  success- 
fully to  dispute  or  to  displace  them. 

It  must  at  once  Ix?  admitted  that  we  cannot  affirm  the  self- 
consciousness,  and  so  the  complete  Self-hood  or  Personality  of 
God,  in  quite  tlie  same  way  as  tliat  in  which  we  are  led  to 
believe  that  the  World-Ground  must  be  conceived  of  as  Will 
and  Mind.  All  rejisoninir  about  the  interactions  and  relations 
of  finite  things  and  minds,  and  all  forms  of  mentally  repre- 
senting these  interactions  and  relations,  imply  the  immanence 
and  control  of  an  active,  telcological  principle  in  the  world. 
Tliis  truth  must  Ije  accepted,  with  all  tliat  it  implicates,  or  else  all 
attempt  to  give  a  rational  expliination  to  any  form  of  liuman 
experience  must  be  abandoned.  But  there  are  many  exhibi- 
tions of  this  principle  concerning  which  experience  cannot  af- 
firm the  presence  of  self-conscious  and  personal   Life,  in  the 

6 


32  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

fuller  meaning  of  this  term.  Molecules,  atoms,  ions,  as  well 
as  everything  animate  or  inanimate,  from  expanding  iron  to 
growing  cell,  from  flower  in  crannied  wall  to  star  overhead,  are 
individual  beings  whose  actions  and  relations  exemplify  the 
truth  of  immanent  Will  and  Mind.  But  that  each  of  these 
beings  is  self-conscious  and  personal,  or  even  conscious  so  as 
to  have  any  awareness  of  the  ends  which  it  seems  to  us  to  serve, 
or  of  any  ends  whatever,  we  cannot  claim  to  know  in  any  de- 
monstrative way. 

It  has  been  claimed  in  the  interests  of  the  theistic  position, 
that  the  conception  of  a  mind  which  is  not  self-conscious  or  at 
least  conscious,  is  like  the  conception  of  "  wooden  iron;  "  it 
involves,  that  is  to  say,  a  contradiction  in  terms.  Now  it  is 
undoubtedly  true  that  all  knowledge  of  the  nature  of  mind  is 
conscious  experience.  The  results  of  such  knowledge  are  pre- 
sentable and  intelligible  only  in  terras  of  consciousness.  More- 
over, in  order  to  know  what  it  is  to  be  a  Self,  or  Person,  in 
the  fullest  meaning  of  the  word,  one  must  have  had  the  ex- 
perience of  self-consciousness.  It  is  also  true  that  selfhood, 
or  personality,  is  impossible — cannot  exist,  cannot  be  con- 
ceived of — without  self-consciousness.  Undoubtedly,  too,  the 
measure  of  mind  which  is  credited  to  the  lower  animals,  as 
well  as  to  our  fellow  men,  and  even  to  plants  and  inorganic 
things,  is  realizable  for  human  minds,  only  in  terms  of  conscious- 
ness. All  psychology,  even  that  which  assumes  to  deal  with 
the  "unconscious,"  or  the  "subliminal,"  is  descriptive  and  ex- 
planatory of  conscious  states  in  terms  of  such  states.  And 
yet  there  remains  the  undoubted  fact  that,  so  far  as  immediate 
experience  or  observation  can  go,  the  greater  part  by  far  of 
all  the  world's  happenings  take  place  without  either  the  con- 
sciousness, or  the  self-consciousness,  of  finite  beings  availing  to 
account  for  them  as  an  immanent  cause.  These  happenings, 
too,  all  make  upon  the  mind  the  irresistible  impression  of  being 
manifestations  of  intelligent  will.  This  is  the  lesson  of  the 
religious  development  of  humanity,  all  the  way  from  the  low- 


THE  ARGUMEXT  RECONSTRUCTED  83 

est  stage  of  unreflective  spiiitism  to  the  highest  form  of  phil- 
osophical monotheism. 

Whenever,  then,  it  is  proposed  to  attribute  the  unifying  actus 
of  a  self-conscious  Life  to  the  world  at  large,  or  to  justify  re- 
ligious faith  in  the  Selfhood  of  God  on  grounds  of  the  obvious 
self-conscious  and  personal  characteristics  belonging  to  this 
world,  the  proposal  voices  certain  well-founded  impressions, 
which  can  be  supported  by  credible  proofs ;  but  the  argu- 
ment rests  upon  somewhat  tentative  and  doubtful  grounds. 

For,  in  tlie  first  pkice,  the  enormous  complexity  and  bewil- 
dering variety  of  causes  and  happenings  which  the  world,  con- 
ceived of  as  a  totality,  exhibits,  seem  to  made  it  difficult  or  im- 
possible to  unite  them  in  any  one  event,  so  to  say,  like  that  of 
an  act  or  state  of  self-consciousness.  Each  atom,  molecule, 
ion,  ovum,  thing,  finite  mind  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  its 
development,  surely  cannot  be  said  always  to  be  self-conscious 
and  so  personal  in  the  higlier  meaning  of  the  term.  Mucli 
less  would  it  seem  that  the  totality  of  them  all,  in  all  their  re- 
lations, could  be  demonstrably  proved  to  coexist — not  simply 
at  some  one  time,  but  always  and  essentially — within  the  grasp 
of  the  self-consciousness  or  other-consciousness  of  some  one 
Personal  Life.  That  the  Being  of  the  world  shall  be  explained 
as  the  dependent  manifestation  of  a  Pei"sonal  Absolute,  wlio  is 
conscious  and  self-conscious  ;  that  It  shall  be  considered  as 
only  the  impersonal  term  for  that  Principle  which  is,  essen- 
tially considered,  the  Absolute  Solf ; — this  is,  indeed,  an  ex- 
alted conception  and  one  worthy  of  the  most  serious  and  prin 
longed  consideration.  But  there  is  no  safe  and  sure  sliort-cut 
in  tlie  argument  ])y  wliich  to  justify  tlie  conception.  On  the 
contrary,  tlicre  are  many  and  great  difiicultics  which  lie  along 
the  way. 

The  contemptuous  manner  in  whi(  h  some  writei-s  have  dis- 
missed th(^  rational  postulate  tliat  the  World-Ciround  is 
self-conscious  and  pci'sonal  Being  is  even  less  wortliy  of  the 
thougijtful    mind    than     is    the    easy-going    dismissal    of    the 


84  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

difficulties  involved  in  its  proof.  To  affirm  off-hand  that  "  abso- 
luteness "  and  "  personality  "  are  incompatible  and  self-contra- 
dictory conceptions,  or  that  an  Infinite  Being  cannot  be  self-con- 
scious, because  this  implies  limitation,  is  again  to  mistake 
mere  juggling  with  abstract  terms  for  sound  criticism  of  an 
impressive  argument.  Especially  is  this  manner  of  procedure 
impertinent,  when  it  is  accompanied  by  the  proposal  to  make 
some  purely  negative  notion  play  the  part  of  a  valid  explana- 
tory principle.  If  God  cannot  be  infinite  and  also  personal, 
it  is  a  fortiori  true  that  "The  Infinite,"  "the  Unconscious," 
"  the  Unknowable,"  cannot  in  any  wise  be  made  to  take  the 
place  of  an  infinite,  personal  God.  Neither  does  it  help  either 
head,  heart,  or  conscience,  to  proclaim  the  dictum — so  fashion- 
able of  late — that  the  Infinite  and  Ultimate  Reality  is  some- 
thing "more  "  and  "  higher  "  than  personal.  More  and  higher 
than  all  human  conceptions  of  his  personal  Being,  God  undoubt- 
edly is.  This  truth  has  always  been  insisted  upon  by  the  high- 
est religious  experience,  and  by  the  most  penetrating  insight 
and  elaborate  reasoning  of  the  philosophy  of  religion.  But,  so 
far  as  human  imagination  and  thought  can  compass  what 
that  something  is  like,  it  must  be  imagined  and  thought  in 
terms  of  the  most  perfect  self-conscious  and  personal  Life. 
It  is  the  Ideal  of  such  Life  which  sets  to  humanity  its  stand- 
ard of  value.  Anything  higlier  and  better  than  this  ever-ad- 
vancing Ideal  is  not  to  be  spoken  of  as  a  substitute  for  the 
Ideal  itself.  And  all  the  negative  and  limiting  conceptions 
proposed  as  substitutes  are  quite  devoid  of  either  theoretical  or 
practical  worth. 

It  is  significant  to  note  that  the  one  form  of  religious  philos- 
ophy which  has  most  keenly  felt  and  boldly  expressed  the 
difficulty  of  conceiving  of  God  as  both  absolute  and  self-con- 
scious, infinite  and  personal,  has  itself  been  exceedingly  vacil- 
lating and  equivocal  in  the  use  of  its  terms.  This  form  of  the 
philosophy  of  religion  is  customarily  called  pantheistical ;  even 
when  it  is  not  charged  with  being  pantheism  outright.     Abun- 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  85 

dant  illustrations  of  this  historical  fact  might  be  derived  from 
the  treatment  given  to  this  conception,  whether  as  embodied 
in  the  Nous  of  Anaxagoras  and  Plotinus,  or  the  Logos  of  Philo 
and  of  much  of  Christian  mysticism.  Even  Islam,  with  its 
stern  and  fanatical  assertion  of  the  sovereignt}^  of  a  personal 
God,  when  its  later  theological  developments  brought  it  face 
to  face  with  this  problem,  fell  into  the  same  vacillation  and 
habit  of  equivocating.  "The  anthropomorphic  God  of  Mu- 
hammad, who  has  face  and  hands,  is  seen  in  Paradise  by  the 
believer  and  settles  himself  firmly  upon  his  throne,  becomes  a 
spirit,  and  a  spirit,  too,  of  the  vaguest  kind."^  This  rejection 
of  personal  qualifications  as  limitations  inconsistent  Avith  the 
absoluteness  of  tlie  One  God  led  such  a  theologian  as  Ibn 
Hazm  to  the  startling  conclusion  that  all  the  human  and  moral 
attributes  ascribed  to  Allah  by  the  Koran  are  mere  names  ;  they 
indicate  nothing  belonging  to  the  real  essence  of  the  Infinite. 
To  regard  these  names  as  ontologically  valid  would  involve 
multiplicity  in  God's  nature;  for  there  would  at  least  be  intro- 
duced into  the  Divine  Being  the  distinction  of  quality  and  the 
thing  qualified.  Along  this  path  the  later  Sufis  come  to  the 
wholly  puntheistic  position,  which  denies  the  self-conscious 
personality  of  God  and  identifies  God  and  the  world.  "It  is 
part  of  the  irony  of  the  history  of  Muslim  theology,"  says  a 
writer'  on  this  subject,  "that  the  very  emphasis  on  the  tran- 
scendental unity  should  lead  thus  to  pantheism." 

In  the  religions  philosophy  of  India — the  reflective  thinking 
which  is,  on  the  intellectual  side,  the  religion  of  Brahmanism — 
tlie  confusion  caused  by  the  efforts  to  unite  the  factoi*s  neces- 
sary to  the  conception  of  an  Absolute  Pereon  is  conspicuous. 
This  philosophy,  indeed,  includes  within  its  entire  circuit 
every  iin[)()rtant  phase  of  Ix-li^'f  respecting  the  nature  of  the 
One  Divine  Being — from  Tiieism  to  Pantheism,  from  Material- 

*  Macdonald,  Muslim  Theology,  Jiirisprutlcnce  and  Constitutional  Theory, 
p.   115. 

?  Macdonald,  Ibid.,  233. 


86  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ism  to  monistic  Spiritualism.  But  for  this  reason,  and  through- 
out it  all,  it  shows  the  characteristics  of  vacillation  and  equivo- 
cation. Brahma  is  variously  conceived  of  and  defined  in  shift- 
ing manner,  with  the  ohvious  intention  of  escaping  the  charge 
of  limiting  the  conception,  and  at  the  same  time  securing  a 
fuller  satisfaction  both  to  the  philosophical  and  to  the  religious 
consciousness.^  "  All  this  (universe)  is  Brahma'^  "  This 
(universal  being)  is  my  ego,  spirit,  and  is  Brahma^  force  (ab- 
solute being)."  Brahma  is  "the  self-determining  principle 
manifesting  itself  in  all  the  determinations  of  the  finite  with- 
out losing  its  unity  with  itself."  It  is  "  absolute  thought  and 
being."  The  world  of  our  experience,  which  is  Maya,  came 
into  existence  because  Brahma  "  thought  and  willed  to  become 
many  and  accordingly  became  many."^  Brahma  may  even  be 
called,  when  the  thought  of  the  thinker  escapes  from  the 
leashes,  "self-conscious  spirit."  But  when  the  stricter  inter- 
pretation of  the  nature  of  this  spirit,  with  its  self-conscious 
activity,  is  demanded,  the  fear  of  limiting  the  Absolute,  defin- 
ing the  Infinite,  calls  the  thought  back  to  the  necessity  of  em- 
ploying more  vague  and  flexible  terms.  Then  Brahma  is 
incomprehensible  and  is  to  be  described  only  by  negatives. 
That  the  more  modern  thinking  over  this  problem  finds  itself 
beset  at  this  point  with  the  same  difficulties,  and  tempted  to 
the  same  mode  of  escape  from  them,  there  is  no  need  to  show 
in  detail,  in  the  present  connection. 

It  is  therefore  imperative  for  religion,  if  it  proposes  to  recon- 
cile that  philosophical  conception  of  the  Being  of  the  World 
which  is  supported  by  the  assumptions  and  discoveries  of  the 
positive  sciences,  with  the  conception  which  it  holds  respecting 
the  Object  of  its  own  faith  and  worsliip,  that  it  should  arrive  at 

1  For  illustrations,  see  Hopkins,  Religions  of  India,  p.  221/. 

2  Comp.  the  Vedanta  Sutra,  1-5;  and,  as  a  modern  Hindu  writer  declares: 
"Thus  Rationalism  (that  is  of  the  Vedanta  philosophy)  reveals  the  Supreme 
Being  both  as  personal  and  impersonal  (The  Hindu  System  of  Religious  Sci- 
ence and  Art,  by  Kishori  Lai  Sarkar,  p.  19). 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  87 

some  clear  understanding  of  its  position  in  the  face  of  these 
difficulties.  Is  God  to  be  conceived  of,  not  simply  as  Absolute 
Will  and  Mind,  in  the  vague  and  shifty  fashion  in  which  The- 
ism and  Pantheism  may  be  now  antagonistic  and  now  agreed  ; 
but,  the  rather,  as  a  self-conscious  Person,  a  true  and  complete 
Self? 

Tlie  more  recent  discussions  of  this  problem  have  been  ac- 
customed to  minimize  its  importance  by  passing  it  by  on  the 
one  side  or  the  other.  Those  who  take  the  left-hand  path,  as- 
sume that  the  complete  incompatibility  of  absolute  and  infinite 
Being  with  the  limiting  conditions  of  self-consciousness  has 
been  so  established  as  to  make  unnecessary  further  discussion. 
Those  who  pass  the  same  problem  by  upon  the  right-hand  side 
are  apt  to  shield  themselves  by  an  appeal  to  the  claim  of  Lotze^ : 
"  Perfect  personality  is  in  God  only,  to  all  finite  minds  there  is 
allotted  but  a  pale  copy  thereof ;  the  finiteness  of  the  finite  is 
not  a  producing  condition  of  this  Pereonality  but  a  limit  and 
a  hindrance  of  its  development."  We  do  not  find  it,  alas  !  so 
easy  on  merely  metaphysical  grounds  to  settle  this  contention. 
That  the  antinomies  in  the  conception  of  an  Absolute  Self- 
conscious  Person  are  largely  introduced  there  by  those  who 
find  them,  or  by  their  predecessors  in  the  same  line  of  research, 
we  have  no  doubt.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  well  to  remember 
that  Lotze  himself  came  to  his  conclusion  only  at  the  end  of  a 
lengthy  discussion  of  related  problems  ;  and  that  the  conclusion, 
as  applied  in  the  philosophy  of  religion,  follows  from  a  doc- 
trine of  the  reality  of  things  and  of  their  dependent  existence^ 
which  is  by  no  means  either  a  universally  accepted  postulate 
of  science  or  an  undisputed  principle  of  ontology. 

What  Ixitter,  then,  can  philasophy  do  at  this  point  for  the  con- 
ception of  religion  than  accord  to  it  the  favorable  considemtiou 
to  which,  on  histr)rical  and  psychological  grounds,  it  is  clearly 
entitled'.'*     To    such   a  considi»ration   tlie    following    thoughts 

1  Microcosrnus  (English  Trun.sl:ition\   II,  p.  688. 
'As  given  at  length  in  his  MeUiphy.sik,  Book  I. 


8S  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

prepare  the  way.  And,  first,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
more  purely  religious  beliefs,  sentiments,  and  practical  life  of 
mankind  are  better  satisfied  with,  than  without,  the  conception 
of  God  as  self-conscious  Spirit,  a  true  Person,  or  Self.  This 
fact  is  evidenced  by  the  form  taken  by  the  highest  develop- 
ments of  religious  experience  in  the  past.  It  is,  indeed,  in- 
volved in  a  very  important  way  in  the  most  essential  charac- 
teristics of  this  experience.  The  experience  itself  is  one  of 
personal  and  spiritual  relations  ;  the  most  important  beliefs,  sen- 
timents, and  practical  life  of  religion  cannot  be  understood  or 
justified  in  terms  of  a  conception  which  denies  self-consciousness 
to  the  Absolute  Will  and  Mind.  If  the  undoubted  conclusions 
of  the  particular  sciences  or  of  modern  philosophy  should  dis- 
cover that  the  World-Ground  cannot  be,  or  rightfully  be  con- 
ceived of  as  being,  a  self-conscious  Spirit,  then  these  sciences 
and  this  philosophy  could  not  be  brought  into  a  rational  har- 
mony with  the  supreme  product  of  the  religious  experience. 
But  the  persistence  and  development  of  religious  experience, 
with  its  beliefs,  sentiments,  and  practices,  is  as  much  a  funda- 
mental fact  as  is  the  persistence  and  development  of  either  sci- 
ence or  philosophy.  And  philosophy  is  especially  charged  with 
the  responsible  task  of  a  perpetual  effort  to  bring  about  har- 
mony in  the  total  life  of  humanity. 

But,  second,  a  critical  examination  of  the  conceptions  cur- 
rently subsumed  under  such  titles  as  Absolute,  Infinite,  The 
Unconscious,  Self-consciousness,  Personality,  etc.,  shows  that 
every  one  of  them  is  in  constant  need  of  revision  and  improve- 
ment. Especially  is  such  need  apparent  in  the  case  of  those 
vague,  negative  conglomerates  of  thought  and  imagination  that 
are  wont  to  be  clothed  in  some  of  these  terms.  Small  wonder, 
then,  that  they  refuse  to  lie  quietly  side  by  side  in  the  same 
bed  with  any  rational  conception  of  a  self-conscious  and  personal 
existence.  It  may  be  possible,  however, — and  we  need  not, 
at  least  antecedently  to  renewed  trials,  despair  of  this  possibil- 
ity,— to  remove  from  these  terms  some  of  their  more  unwar- 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  89 

rantable  and  objectionable  factors ;  and  thus  to  make  them 
fitter  companions  for  union  with  the  factors  really  belonging  to 
the  nature  of  a  Self.  Or,  even  in  the  last  resort :  What  if  one 
should  feel  obliged  to  deny  the  absoluteness  and  infinity  of 
God,  in  the  stricter  meaning  of  these  terms,  in  order  to  save 
some  intelligible  and  practical  concept  of  his  personality  ?  This 
would,  indeed,  be  a  disappointing  result.  It  might  force  the 
mind  back  upon  the  Kantian  position  of  a  recognized  power- 
lessness  to  transcend  the  limits  of  the  cognitive  reason  ;  but,  as 
Kant  liekl,  we  might  be  none  the  less  compelled  to  believe  in 
God  as  Infinite  Person,  in  the  interests  of  moral  and  practical 
reason.  And  to  sacrifice — at  least  for  the  time  being — some- 
thing from  our  conception  of  God  on  the  side  of  his  absolute- 
ness and  infinitude,  would  not  necessarily  be  more  irrational 
than  to  surrender  all  claim  to  a  belief  in  Him  as  Self-conscious 
Spirit. 

Indeed,  even  on  metaphysical  and  purely  cognitive  grounds, 
the  finger-point  of  the  highest  rationality  would  seem  to  indicate 
that  tlie  path  to  Reality  lies  in  the  opposite  direction.  For,  in 
the  tliird  place,  if  it  cannot  be  affirmed  that  all  real  Being  must 
be,  and  essentially  is,  self-conscious,  it  can  be  demonstrated 
that  man's  best-known  being,  as  well  as  the  most  liighly  de- 
veloped and  valuable  form  of  being  conceivable  by  man,  is  that 
of  a  self-conscious  Pei-son.  Whether  other  apparent  beings 
have  any  reality,  real  unity,  or  indeed  real  place  in  the  Univeree 
of  beings  and  events,  or  not,  our  own  self-conscious  selves  are 
known  to  be  real  and  unitary,  in  a  very  special  and  umleniable 
way.  And  what  is  even  more  importiint  for  tlie  argument: 
Self-conscious  Ix^ings,  so  far  as  the  human  mind  can  know  or 
conceive  of  Reality,  stiind  at  its  very  head  in  the  scale  of  values. 
Or — to  express  the  same  truth  in  a  more  aljstract  way — to  be 
self-conscious,  to  l)e-for-oneself,  to  have  *' For-Self-Ht-ing,"  is  to 
have  atUiined  the  very  most  distinguished  and  intensely  actual 
and  profoundly  worthy  kiml  of  existence.  It  is  such  self-con- 
scious personal  existence,  which,  in  the  example  of  man  as  a 


90  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

species,  and  supremely  in  the  example  of  the  few  most  highly- 
gifted  and  developed  of  humanity,  is  altogether  the  choicest 
known  or  conceivable  product  of  Nature's  evolution  through 
the  ages. 

It  is  not  of  morbid,  or  of  excessive  and  vain  self-conscious- 
ness, in  the  popular  acceptance  of  the  term,  that  we  are  speak- 
ing in  this  connection.  Neither  does  the  argument  depreciate 
the  value  and  significance  of  those  artistic  and  constructive 
activities  in  which  the  Self  seems  to  lose  itself;  or  even  of 
those  states  of  religious  contemplation  or  intuition,  in  which 
a  certain  immediacy  of  the  knowledge  of  the  object  seems 
largely  or  wholly  to  exclude  the  reflective  attitude.  But  that 
a  being  who  could  form  no  conception  of  a  Self,  could  never 
know  what  itself  was  about,  could  only  be  mere  intelligent  Will 
without  being  a  self-comprehending  Mind,  must  not  be  re- 
garded as  vastly  inferior  to  a  developed  self-conscious  Person, 
it  is  impossible  to  concede.  Mind,  without  self-consciousness, 
if  such  mind  could  really  be  at  all,  would  not  be  s^Zf-compre- 
liending,  s^//-directing,  8e//"-determining — all  of  which  capacities 
are  most  essential  for  the  existence  and  development  of  a 
Self,  and  themselves  stand  highest  in  the  scale  of  rational 
values. 

It  is  in  order  now  to  notice  that  the  existence  and  develop- 
ment of  selves  are  facts,  the  account  of  which  must  somehow 
be  found  in  this  same  World-Ground.  Even  to  take  the 
scientific  point  of  view  is  to  accept  the  warrant  for  regarding 
man  himself  as  a  child  of  Nature.  A  society  of  selves  is  to  be 
explained  as  the  product  somehow  resulting,  under  the  laws 
which  phj^sics,  chemistry,  and  biology  have  discovered,  from 
the  forces  that  are  conceived  of  as  differentiations  of  Nature's 
exhaustless  Energy.  For  however  the  human  species  came 
to  be  such,  it  is  in  fact  composed  of  self-conscious  as  well  as 
intelligent  wills.  In  the  case  of  the  individual  man  it  is  his  own 
psychical  activities  that  construct  the  peculiar  type  of  self-hood 
which  each  individual  has.     A  true  person,  or  Self,  cannot  come 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  91 

into  existence,  unless  the  forces  and  stimuli  existing  outside 
serve  to  arouse  the  dormant  will  and  inchoate  reason  to  the  full 
measure  of  an  energy  that  is  something  more  and  higher  than 
that  of  blind  will,  or  unconscious  mind.  Only  self-conscious 
and  self-determined  activity  can  create  a  Self. 

When,  then,  the  conception  of  a  Nature  which  can  so  bring 
into  co-operation  the  external  and  internal  or  psychical  forces 
as  to  create  a  Self  is  reflectively  examined,  this  conception  is 
found  to  be  no  barren  and  meagre  affair.  Can  an  unconscious, 
or  a  non-self-conscious  Nature  create  and  develop  a  race  of  self- 
conscious  personal  beings?  Can  mere  willing  Mind,  or  mere 
intelligent  Will,  without  experience  of  the  nature,  tlie  method, 
and  the  value  of  personality,  serve  as  a  satisfactory  explanatory 
principle  for  this  human  species  which  is,  in  fact,  self-conscious ; 
and  for  its  historical  evolution  into  even  so  high  a  grade  of  self- 
hood as  man  has  already  attained  ?  It  seems  to  us  that  the 
only  credible,  not  to  say  conceivably  tenable,  answer  to  such 
an  inquiry  is  a  decisive  No.  In  order  to  beget  and  to  nourish 
self-conscious  existences  the  World-Ground,  or  some  impor- 
tant part  of  It,  must  itself  be  a  self-conscious  Personal  Life,  a 
true  Self.  And  by  so  much  as  the  positive  sciences  are  be- 
coming confident  about  the  real  unity  and  absoluteness  of  this 
World-Ground,  by  just  so  much  the  more  should  philosophy  be 
confirmed  in  the  opinion  that  its  real  Unitary  Being  is  that  of  an 
Absolute  Self. 

The  logical  conviction  that  it  is  impossible  to  derive  the 
personal  from  the  Impersonal,  a  multitude  of  developing  finite 
selves  from  a  World-Ground  that  is  wholly  lacking  in  the 
possession  and  appreciation  of  Selfhood,  is  strengthened  by 
considerations  which  flow  from  the  social  life  of  humanity. 
Now  the  problem  which  presses  for  an  answer  is  this :  What 
sort  of  Being  must  the  World  have  in  order  that  it  may  serve 
as  the  rational  and  real  (Jround  of  a  community  of  selves — a 
network  of  commcju  experiences,  a  social  existence,  between 
one    self-conscious    Self   and    other   selves?     Here    am     I — a 


92  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Self ;  but  I  am  not,  and  I  cannot  conceive  of  myself  as  being, 
a  lone  Self.  Even  my  physical  environment  is,  fundamentally 
considered,  a  social  affair.  Even  "  Things "  manifest  them- 
selves to  me  as  not  merely  my  objects,  but  as  essentially  the 
same  objects  for  others,  whose  conscious  and  self-conscious 
experience  is  essentially  like  my  own.  The  totality  of  phys- 
ical existences  is  not  for  me,  or  for  my  fellows,  an  Absolute 
that  is  a  mere  aggregate,  or  lump  sum,  of  things.  Much  less 
is  the  environment  of  other  selves  a  mere  multitude,  or  gross 
number,  of  the  human  species.  It  is  the  rather  a  society,  in 
which  individual  persons  are  bound  together  by  an  infinite 
number  of  bonds,  both  the  so-called  physical  and  the  so-called 
psychical,  all  of  which  are  knowable  and  useable,  only  on  the 
assumption  that  the  Being  of  the  World  in  which  they  have 
their  Ground,  has  the  nature  of  a  social,  a  humanly  Universal,  an 
all-embracing  Self. 

That  this  is  anthropomorphizing,  is  preparing  the  image  and 
ideal  of  our  own  thought,  in  a  way  fit  to  be  worshipped  and 
obeyed,  may  undoubtedly  be  charged  against  the  argument. 
But  the  word  "  anthropomorphism "  should  have  ceased  by 
this  time  either  to  deter  or  to  terrify  our  minds.  For  all 
the  sesthetical  and  moral  values  which  characterize  the 
conception  of  God  contribute  to  the  weight  of  argument  in 
favor  of  the  same  truth.  Undoubtedly,  the  reflective  thinker 
experiences  a  feeling  of  awesomeness  and  of  mystery  before 
such  vague  conceptions  as  endeavor  to  represent  the  Divine 
Being  without  limiting  Him  by  any  terms  that  apply  to 
human  and  finite,  self-conscious  existence.  This  feeling  is 
genuinely  worthy  and  true  to  reality  in  the  view  of  any  at- 
tempt to  explicate  and  defend  the  conception  of  God.  But  it 
is  least  of  all  appropriate  when  the  very  process  of  thought 
which  has  framed  the  conception  has  neglected  to  introduce 
into  it  those  factors  that  are  most  appropriately  greeted  with 
feelings  of  awe  and  mystery  ;  and  they  are  just  those  factors 
which  can  be  actualized  only  in  the  lives  of  self-conscious  and 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  93 

personal  beings.  Respect  for  the  mystery,  the  grandeur,  and 
the  worth,  of  Personal  Being  is  the  most  rational  kind  of  re- 
spect. For  Things,  as  such,  there  is  little  or  no  reason  to 
have  respect ;  they  are  awful  and  respectable  only  in  so  far  as 
they  are  means  and  servants  of  persons.  The  religious  feel- 
ings are  appropriate  toward  things,  because  religion  regards 
them  as  somehow  being  partial  and  undeveloped  selves,  or  else 
as  manifestations  of  the  thought  and  will  of  the  Absolute  Per- 
son. In  living  and  conscious  beings  it  is  not  the  blind  and 
instinctive  psychical  stirrings  and  strivings  which  we  observe 
with  most  of  respect.  We  feel  the  mysterious  nature  and 
profound  value  of  these  lower  forms  of  soul-life,  only  when  we 
regard  them  as  the  beginnings  of  Nature  on  her  way  to  the 
production  of  self-conscious  personality.  And  even  among 
men — who  differ  so  enormously  in  the  amounts  of  self-hood, 
so  to  say,  which  they  achieve — it  is  those  individuals  that  at- 
tain the  heights  of  personal  experience  and  personal  develop- 
ment, who  seem  most  worthy  of  an  awesome  veneration  and 
of  the  regard  appropriate  to  what  is  most  sublime.  Kant  has 
nowhere  arrived  at  a  more  satisfactory  position  than  that 
which  he  assumes  when  he  claims  that  our  human  "feelincf  of 
the  Sublime  in  Nature  "  implies  a  respect  for  what  in  less  de- 
gree we  find  in  ourselves — the  Personal — and  which  we  then 
by  an  irresistible  law  of  our  rational  activities  attiibute  in  su- 
preme mciisiire  to  the  Impei-sonal.  It  is  plainly,  to  use  his 
own  phrase,  a  "conversion  of  respect  for  the  Idea  of  humanity 
ill  our  own  subject  into  respect  for  the  object."' 

There  are  many  other  similar  considerations  derived  from  a 
study  of  the  nature  of  human  knowledtre,  and  from  an  analysis 
and  criticism  of  those  fundamental  characteristics  which  the 
mind  attributes  to  all  reality, — the  so-called  categories, — that 
compel  us,  finally,  to  place  the  argument  for  the  self-conscious- 
ness of  the  World-Ground,  the  personality  of  God,  upon  a  yet 
surer  and  broader  phih)S()phical  basis.     No  meaning    can    bo 

»  Kritik   dcr   rrtheiKsknift,    I,    §    11. 


94  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

given  to  such  abstract  terms  as  "  the  Absolute  "  or  *'  the  Infi- 
nite," unless  these  adjectival  words  are  further  defined  by  being 
attached  to  some  Subject.  The  only  kind  of  a  subject  to  which 
they  can  be  attached  in  such  manner  as  to  make  the  completed 
conception  serve  the  purposes  of  a  real  explanatory  principle 
is  that  kind  of  a  subject  which  is  known  as  a  self-conscious 
Being,  a  Person,  a  Self.  Unity  amidst  multiplicity  and  variety, 
real  Identity  of  some  sort  that  is  compatible  with  actual  change, 
Indi\dduality  that  maintains  its  essential  being  through  all 
processes  of  becoming.  Law  that  reigns  over  things  or  exists 
as  immanent  idea  in  things,  a  Whole  that  admits  of,  and  de- 
pends upon,  interactions  and  causal  relations  between  its  parts 
— these  and  all  like  conceptions  and  principles  under  which  the 
human  mind  is  obliged  to  view  and  to  interpret  its  experience, 
are,  without  exception,  taken  from  the  experience  of  a  self- 
conscious  person  with  himself  and  with  other  things  and  selves. 
To  try  to  combine  any  or  all  of  them  in  a  description  of  the 
Absolute,  and  to  leave  self-consciousness  out,  is  to  overlook 
and  to  discredit  that  very  experience  in  which  they  all  origi- 
nate ;  and  for  the  description  and  explanation  of  which  they  are 
appropriate  and  serviceable.  "  Self-consciousness  "  is  the  one 
category  which  is  rich  enough  in  content,  and  real  enough  in 
its  nature,  to  envelope  and  validate  all  the  others.  This  cate- 
gory we  cannot,  indeed,  ascribe  to  all  manner  of  things,  organic 
and  inorganic,  or  even  to  all  forms  of  animal  life,  as  though 
they  were,  each  one,  centers  of  self-conscious,  or  even  of  con- 
scious, functioning.  Individual  self-conscious  beings,  or  selves, 
are  comparatively  rare  ;  finite  persons,  as  we  know  them,  are 
always  developments  whose  preconditions  and  antecedents 
seem  to  belong  to  the  realm  of  the — to  us — Unconscious ; 
that  is=:to  the  L^nknown  or  the  Unknowable.  But,  when  the 
mind  tries  to  connect  such  unconscious  individual  beings  with 
those  that  appear  to  be  conscious,  and  finally  with  self-conscious 
beings,  it  can  discover  no  active  Principle  that  seems  capable 
of  uniting  them  all  into  a  self-consistent  and  self-regarding 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  y5 

system,    except   that   which    implies    the    reality   of    a   self- 
conscious  Absolute  Person. 

If,  then,  the  argument  is  carried  through  it  is  found  to  estab- 
lish this  conclusion  :  Nothing  can  be  known  about  the  Unit- 
ary and  Real  Being  of  the  World,  unless  this  knowledge  be 
known  and  stated  in  terms  of  a  self-conscious  Life.  All  the 
terms  in  which  science,  philosophy,  and  the  plain  man's  obser- 
vation and  reflection  express  themselves,  are  based  upon  this 
awareness  of  self,  of  other  selves,  and  of  so-called  not-selves. 
These  other  selves  are  known  or  imagined  after  the  analog}^ 
of  tlie  self-known  Self  ;  the  not-selves  are  either  not-known — 
mere  negative  and  barren  abstractions ;  or  they  are  known 
as  imperfect  and  half-finished  selves.  And  although  human 
knowledge  does  not  guarantee  the  right  to  afTirm  that  each 
thing,  or  part  of  an  individual  tiling,  is  a  center  of  conscious 
and  self-conscious  life,  the  human  mind  cannot  imagine  what  it 
really  is  to  be  an  individual,  as  a  dependent  part  of  an  intel- 
ligible system,  without  using  terms  that  have  meaning  oidy 
for  self-consciousness. 

In  conclusion,  then,  we  are  obliged  to  say  that  the  concep- 
tion of  the  World-Ground  as  unconscious  Avill  and  mind  does 
not  remove  the  limitations  of  human  self-consciousness  from  the 
conception.  On  the  contrary,  it  deprives  the  conception  of 
what  is  clearest  and  most  valuable  in  all  the  cognitive  processes 
of  humanity.  It  proposes  to  substitute  an  attempt  to  conceive 
the  inconceivable  for  a  thought  which,  although  it  is  necessarily 
limited  by  the  nature  of  our  finite  human  experience,  is,  never- 
theless, representiitive  of  what  is  intellectually  most  well- 
founded,  and  aesthetically  and  ethically  most  valuable,  in  this 
experience;  its  inevitable  logical  result  is  a  return  to  dogmatic 
agnosticism. 

For  these  reasons  the  tlieistic  argument  is  entitled  to  postu- 
late the  conception  of  God  ius  the  Pei'sonal  Alwolute,  a  Self  in 
the  sui)reme8t  possible  meaning  of  tliat  word.  All  the  various 
linos  of  argument  converge  upon  this  conclusion.     It  is,  how- 


96  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ever,  a  conclusion  which  needs  still  further  critical  examina- 
tion with  a  view,  if  possible,  to  relieve  the  conception  from 
some  of  the  internal  contradictions  with  which  it  has  so  fre- 
quently been  charged.  But  the  argument  is  strengthened  in  a 
preliminary  way  by  noticing  the  very  terms  employed  by  those 
who  deny  self-conscious  personality  to  the  Being  of  the  World. 
What — Pray !  is  the  real  meaning,  the  meaning  for  Reality,  of 
the  oft-repeated  categories  applied  to  the  totality  of  the  cosmic 
existences,  forces,  and  processes  ?  On  tlie  basis  of  a  confidence 
in  the  modern  chemico-physical  sciences,  it  is  styled  a  ''  self- 
explanatory,"  *'  c^e(/-contained,"  "  se//-maintaining "  System. 
What,  that  is  intelligible  to  human  minds,  can  this  mean  un- 
less it  be  to  say :  The  Cosmos  is  a  Self,  whose  explanation 
comes  not  from  without  itself?  Its  circuit  and  content  are  not 
included,  as  our  selves  are,  in  Somewhat  greater.  Its  indepen- 
dence is  absolute  ;  for  no  other  than  Itself  has  the  task  of  main- 
taining itself.  But  all  this,  as  we  shall  see,  is  precisely  what 
must  be  understood  by  an  Absolute  Person  or  Self. 

Certain  predicates  of  that  Absolute  Person,  'Svhom  faith 
calls  God,"  seem  to  follow  of  necessity  from  the  very  nature 
of  the  conception.  The  argument  here  is  not  a  return  to  the 
ontological  argument  in  the  form  in  which  it  has  already  been 
rejected.  The  "  proof "  does  not  claim  to  move  demonstra- 
tively from  the  nature  of  the  conception  to  the  reality  of  the 
object  thus  conceived.  The  rather  does  it  seem  certain  that, 
if  the  reality  of  a  Personal  Absolute  as  the  World-Ground  be 
somehow  proved  or  made  a  sure  object  of  rational  faith,  then 
certain  predicates  necessarily  follow  from  the  absoluteness  of 
this  Personality.  Among  such  predicates  the  following  five 
are  chief  :  Omnipotence,  Omnipresence,  Eternity,  Omniscience, 
and  Unity.  These  qualifications  must  be  characteristic  of  an 
Absolute  Self  which  shall  be  so  conceived  of  as  to  afford  a  sat- 
isfactory real  Principle  explanatory  of  the  world  of  things 
and  of  selves.  It  is  an  important  task  of  the  philosophy  of 
religion  to  expound  these  predicates  in  a  manner  consistent 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  97 

with  the  truths  of  fact  and  with  the  nature  of  the  concep- 
tion.^ 

The  conclusion  that  God  is  a  Person  in  the  sense  that  he  is 
self-conscious  and  intelligent  Will  is,  at  one  and  the  same 
time,  the  most  original  and  fundamental  assumption  of  the 
cruder  forms  of  religious  Ijelief,  and  the  most  mature  and  con- 
clusive tenet  of  scientific  and  philosophical  Theism.  On  the 
one  hand,  the  Dakota  dialects  express  "  the  hidden  and  m3's- 
terious  power  of  the  universe"  by  the  word  wakan^^^  tlm 
deification  of  that  peculiar  quality  or  power  of  which  man  is 
conscious  within  himself,  as  directing  his  own  acts  or  willing 
a  course  to  bring  about  certain  results."  In  the  Islands  of  the 
Pacific,  too,  is  found  the  conception  of  a  wonder-working 
power  called  7?mMri=  (apparently)  "that  which  is  within  one," 
the  principle  of  life  and  motion  consciously  directed  to  an  end. 
But  it  is  the  higher  religions,  and  above  all  Christianity,  which 
round  out  this  conception  of  God  as  self-conscious  and  per- 
sonal Life  with  the  fullness  of  moral  attributes.  "  God  is 
Spirit,"  said  Jesus,  "and  they  that  worship  him  must  worship 
in  spirit  and  in  truth." 

A  study  of  the  ethical  nature  and  development  of  man  un- 
doubtedly makes  upon  philosophy  the  demand  that  the  Ground 
of  the  phenomena  of  his  moral  life  should  be  found  in  a  self- 
conscious  Personal  Al)sulute.     But  this  is  not  the  same  thinor 

o 

by  any  means  as  to  say  that  this  Personal  Absolute  must  be 
conceived  of  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  in  a  manner  to  satisfy 
the  claims  of  the  highest  religious  faith.  The  former  conclii- 
eion  rests  upon  a  tolerably  11  rm  and  exceedingly  broad  specu- 
lative basis.     It  is  only  a  further  and  quite  legitimate  exten- 

1  Pfleidcrcr'H  stHtcmciit  scarcely  does  ju.sticc  to  the  nature  of  the  proMcm 
when  he  afTinns  tliat  "those  prechcutes  do  not  arise  out  of  philosophical 
speculation  on  the  nature  of  Go<i,  but  out  of  the  religious  conaciou.sness  of 
God  which  they  Hcek  directly  to  descril*."  They  do  arise  "out  of  the  reli- 
fi^iouH  cotifl<'iou8ne«H,"  but  they  are  more  specifically  adapteil  to  treatment 
in  a  H[>eculative  way.  Sec  his  di^cuasiou  of  the  urguaicnt^,  The  Philosophy 
of  Religion,  III,  sec.  II. 

7 


98  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

sion  of  the  cosmological  argument,  with  its  appreciation  of  the 
principle  of  "  immanent  teleology,"  and  its  confidence  in  the 
ontological  validity  of  the  work  of  human  reason.  In  a  word : 
Because  the  world  of  human  experience  is  shot  through  and 
through  with  facts,  forces,  and  other  manifestations,  that  have 
an  ethical,  or,  at  least,  a  quasi-ethicol  significance,  the  conclu- 
sion is  demanded  that  the  real  principle,  in  whose  Being  this 
world  has  its  Ground,  must  be  so  conceived  of  as  to  explain 
these  ethical  facts,  forces,  and  other  manifestations.  But  the 
further  conclusion,  which  attributes  the  perfection  of  justice, 
goodness,  and  holiness,  to  this  same  World-Ground,  can  only 
appeal  to  one  side  of  even  the  religious  experience  of  the  race ; 
and  this  side  is  shown  chiefly  by  a  triumph  of  faith  over  many 
seemingly  contradictory  facts,  forces,  and  manifestations. 

The  undoubted  truth  of  man's  ethical  history  is  that  some- 
how he  has  come  to  create  for  himself  ideals  of  conduct  and 
character ;  and  that  his  conceptions  of  moral  laws  and  principles 
seem  to  him  to  have  a  very  great,  if  not  a  supreme  and  absolutely 
unconditional  value.  For  these  ideals  and  laws  he  has  never 
had — and  he  never  can  attain — a  wholly  satisfactory  warrant 
in  his  experience  of  the  physical  world  or  of  his  own  social 
and  political  environment.  Moreover,  religion  and  morality, 
although  they  are  by  no  means  wholly  to  be  identified,  have 
throughout  human  history  exercised  an  enormous  influence 
each  upon  the  other ;  they  have  either  aided  or  hindered  each 
other's  development  to  an  almost  incalculable  extent.  "  The 
best  religion  as  related  to  ethics  is,  then,  the  faith  in  an  Ideal 
Personality,  whose  real  Being  affords  the  source,  the  sanctions, 
and  the  guaranty  of  the  best  morality ;  and  to  whom  reverential 
and  loving  loyalty  may  be  the  supreme  principle  for  the  con- 
duct of  life."  1 

If  an  examination  be  made  of  these  "  universals  "  in  ethics 

1  Vol.  I.  chap.  XIX,  and  for  the  following  quotations  not  otherwise  cred- 
ited as  well  as  a  much  fuller  statement  of  the  same  argument,  see  the  author's 
Philosophy  of  Conduct,  chap.  XXIV  and  XXV. 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  99 

which  the  philosophy  of  religion  must  chiefly  take  into  its 
account,  they  are  found  to  be  of  two  orders  :  (1)  Certain  func- 
tions of  human  nature,  and  their  products,  which  belong  to  all 
men  in  whatever  stage  of  moral  evolution ;  and  (2)  certain 
ideals  which,  although  variously  conceived  in  respect  of  their 
details  and  always  conceived  imperfectly,  are  shared  in  by  all 
men,  and  are  recognized  as  powerful  forces  in  the  moral  evolu- 
tion of  humanity.  This  moral  nature  of  man,  with  its  func- 
tions and  their  products,  but  especially  with  that  sort  of 
activity  of  thought  and  imagination  which  creates  moral  ideals, 
comes  out  of  the  larger  Nature  which  has  produced,  environs, 
and  develops  humanity.  The  experienced  world  of  moral 
facts,  laws,  forces,  and  ideas,  no  more  "  explains  itself  "  than 
does  any  other  part  or  aspect  of  this  same  world.  Just  as 
little,  and  even  much  less  satisfactory  to  the  demands  of  the 
reflective  reason,  is  it  perpetually  to  revise  and  to  recite  the  de- 
scription of  the  mechanism,  when  we  are  seeking  to  account 
for  this  form  of  the  evolution  of  mankind.  An  unconscious, 
impersonal,  non-moral  Nature  cannot  be  conceived  of  as  pro- 
ducing a  race  of  self-conscious  personal  and  moral  beings.  A 
Nature  which  has  absolutely  no  capacity  for  appreciating  the 
value  of  moral  ideals,  and  of  character  conformable  to  these 
ideals,  cannot  serve  as  the  explanatory  real  Principle  of  natures 
whicli  develop  such  ideals.  A  systematic  study  of  those  con- 
ceptions and  principles  which  control  the  activities  of  men's 
cognitive  faculties  shows  that  "our  human  way'*  of  knowing 
the  "  Being  of  the  World  "  conceives  of  it  "  after  the  analogy 
of  the  Life  of  a  Self,  as  a  striving  toward  a  completer  self- 
realization  under  tlie  consciously-accepted  motif  of  immanent 
Ideas."'  To  Mr.  Spencer's  question,  "If  the  ethical  man  is 
not  a  product  of  the  cosmic  process,  what  is  he  a  product  of?" 
it  must  undoubtedly  be  answered  that  the  psychological  and 
historical  sciences  are  sufliriently  justified  in  maintaining 
this   view.      Hut  philosophy   wants   to  know  what  is  the  last 

»  A  Theory  of  Reality,  p.  517;  comp.  Philoaophy  of  Conduct,  p.  59S. 


100  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

word  as  to  the  inmost  Being  of  a  Cosmos  whose  process  results 
in  such  a  product.  And  it  cannot  rest  satisfied  in  any  answer 
which  denies  to  this  Being  a  self-conscious  apprehension,  and 
an  appreciation  of  the  value,  of  what  it  is  about  in  going 
through  with  this  process.  From  the  point  of  view  of  ethics, 
the  best  and  most  valuable  known  cosmic  product  is  just 
this  same  ethical  man, — what  he  now  is  ;  but  more  especially 
what  he  may  become,  when  his  moral  ideals  are  raised  to  tlieir 
highest  potency,  and  are  realized  in  their  best  form  by  a  re- 
generated human  society.  That  the  World-Ground  should 
have  got  even  as  far  as  it  has  on  its  sad  and  weary  way  toward 
the  realization  of  these  ideals,  without  knowing  what  it  is 
about,  and  without  caring  for  its  own  success,  and  without  ap- 
preciating its  own  failures  or  triumphs,  is  a  conclusion  which 
human  reason  refuses  to  entertain.  Better  no  God  at  all  than 
one  so  unworthy  of  the  respect,  veneration,  and  service  of  "  the 
ethical  man." 

On  this  subject  we  can  neither  approve  of  the  critical  scep- 
ticism of  Kant  in  his  treatise  of  the  "  Pure  Reason,"  nor  of  his 
critical  dogmatism  in  the  treatise  of  the  "  Practical  Reason." 
What  our  argument  requires  is  not  a  compulsion  to  believe  in 
God  as  prepared  to  "back  up"  with  reward  and  punishment 
an  impersonal  law — itself  apodeictically  demonstrable — by 
an  appeal  to  human  wills  that  may  thmk  of  themselves  as  free, 
although  they  can  only  know  themselves  as  mechanism.  What 
the  argument  seeks,  is  a  sufficient  reason  for  the  rational  faith 
in  a  God  who  knows  and  appreciates  the  value  of  righteous- 
ness ;  and  who  really  is  somehow  the  fountain,  source,  and 
reality,  of  man's  moral  being  and  moral  ideals.  And  this  faith 
is  justified — although  it  must  be  confessed  only  in  a  partial 
way,  so  far  as  the  perfection  of  ethical  spirit  is  concerned — by 
the  same  sort  of  an  argument  as  that  by  which  the  knowledge 
of  God  as  the  World-Ground  is  reached. 

The  objections  to  the  procedure  of  the  theistic  argument  up 
to  this  point  are  for  the  most  part  essentially  those  of  a  dog- 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  101 

matic  and  uncritical  agnosticism.  The  alleged  contradictions, 
and  even  the  difficulties,  which  are  found  in  the  conception  of 
God  as  moral  Personality,  are  chiefly  due  to  the  metaphysical 
habit  of  juggling  with  abstractions.  The  absoluteness  and 
infiniteness  of  the  Divine  Being  are  not  more  inherently  con- 
tradictory of  the  characteristics  assigned  to  him  as  the  self- 
conscious  and  rational  Ground  of  man's  moral  nature  and  moral 
development  than  of  the  position  which  assigns  to  him  intelli- 
gence and  will.  On  the  other  hand,  the  interests  of  man's  re- 
ligious experience  and  religious  ideals  demand  in  a  peculiar 
way,  and  with  a  most  imperative  urgency,  a  rational  faith  in 
the  moral  personality  of  God.  In  the  view  of  those  religions 
which  have  readied  the  higher  stages  of  development,  God  is 
not  God  unless  he  is  conceived  of  after  the  type  of  "  the  ethical 
man."  Indeed,  chief  among  the  works  of  God,  the  gesta  Dei 
in  which  a  recent  writer '  finds  the  '*  religious  proof  "  for  the 
Being  of  God,  is  tliis  same  ethical  man,  with  his  history  of  a 
moral  evolution. 

The  one  objection  which  may  be  urged  most  strongly  against 
any  conception  of  God  as  ethical  personality  is  undoubtedly 
this  :  It  Viiiv\\>\xiQS  feel Inj  to  the  Divine  Being.  And  upon 
this  point  much  of  Christian  theology,  as  well  as  most  of  the 
philosophy  of  religion.  Oriental  and  Occidental,  ancient  and 
modern,  lias  been  really,  although  not  usually  in  a  conscious 
and  avowed  fashion,  opposed  to  regarding  God  as,  so  to  say, 
through  and  through  moral.  Religion,  as  distinguished  from 
its  philosophical  and  theological  stiitements,  has,  on  the  con- 
trary, always  emphasized  the  feeling-full  nature  of  God.  This 
is  especially  true  of  Judaism  and  of  Christianity — the  pre- 
eminently ethical  and  practical  religions  of  humanity.  It  is 
true  also — not  less  intensely  but  far  less  satisfactorily — of  the 
Muslim  faith.  It  is  even  true  in  a  vague  and  indecisive  way 
of  Buddhism. 

Of  the  assumptions  whicli  underlay  the  Catholic  orthrwloxy, 
I  A.  Domer,  Grundrisa  der  Keligionsphiloeophic,  p.  236/. 


102  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

as  it  formed  itself  by  the  end  of  the  third  century,  Hatch  de- 
clares ^ :  "It  is  assumed  that  rest  is  better  than  motion,  that 
passionlessness  is  better  than  feeling,  that  changelessness  is 
better  than  change."  This  view  has  been  fortified  in  modern 
as  well  as  ancient  times  by  tlie  further  assumption  that  weak- 
ness, temptation,  and  the  overcoming  of  these  finite  and  limit- 
ing conditions  by  an  act  of  will,  are  indispensable  to  moral 
character ;  for  morality  is  always  and  essentially  a  matter  of 
development  and  growth.  God,  therefore,  cannot  be  both  ab- 
solute and  infinite,  and  also  moral. 

The  more  complete  answer  to  these  objections  must  await  a 
fuller  consideration  of  the  meaning  in  which,  and  the  extent  to 
which,  moral  attributes  may  be  ascribed  to  God.  We  remain 
for  the  present  in  the  conclusion  that  if  God  is  a  rational,  self- 
conscious  Will,  active  in  the  interest  of  moral  ideals,  or  moral 
ends,  then  he  is  properly  called  an  Ethical  Being.  That  he  is 
such  a  Being,  all  the  ethical  experience  of  the  race  contributes 
to  the  argument  to  prove.  And  it  is  true,  and  grandly  true, 
that  this  conclusion  necessarily  implies  that  God  is  a  Being  of 
feeling,  as  certainly  as  of  mind  and  will.  This  latter  conclusion 
is  so  intimately  connected  with  the  argument,  at  every  stage 
and  in  every  form,  that  if  man's  reflective  thinking  is  valid  for 
any  factor  in  the  conception  of  God,  it  is  valid  for  this  factor. 
The  world  of  man's  experience — things  as  well  as  selves,  and  nat- 
ural events  as  well  as  occurrences  in  human  political  and  social  life 
— is  everywhere  as  truly  a  manifestation  of  feeling,  and  as  vividly 
an  appeal  to  feeling,  as  of  mind  and  will.  Indeed,  the  affective 
factors  can  no  more  be  analyzed  out  of  both  the  knowing  subject 
and  the  known  object,  than  can  the  factors  indicative  of  intelli- 
gence and  volition.  Yet  more  :  Personality  itself  is  not  such  a 
compound  of  intellect,  feeling,  and  will,  as  that  it  could  still  pre- 
serve its  essential  character  if  only  it  should  happen  to  lose  out 
some  one  of  these  three  groups  of  characteristics.  To  be  a  "  per- 
son," limited  or  infinite,  dependent  or  absolute,  implies  self-con- 

1  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  and  Usages  upon  the  Christian  Church,  p.  281. 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  103 

scious  feeling  as  truly  as  self-conscious  thought,  or  will  con- 
sciously directed  toward  ends.  But  especially  absurd  is  it  to  con- 
ceive of  ethical  personality  that  has  no  feeling  appreciative  of 
values  ;  that  is  neither  approving  nor  disapproving  of  courses  of 
conduct  and  of  the  aims  and  ends  of  conduct.  No  contradiction 
between  the  absoluteness  and  the  affective  nature  of  the  Divine 
Being  can  equal  that  which  emerges  in  the  attempt  to  think  of  this 
Being  as  at  one  and  the  same  time  without  feeling  and  yet  an 
ethical  Spirit, — not  to  say  a  perfectly  righteous,  good,  and  holy 
God. 

The  history  of  the  treatment  of  this  problem  of  the  Person- 
ality of  God  by  the  reflective  thinking  of  mankind  is  exceed- 
ingly suggestive.  Its  principal  features  are  well  illustrated  in 
the  attempt  at  a  philosophy  of  religion  made  by  Plutarch. 
This  attempt,  according  to  Oakesmith,^  was  ''  a  compound  of 
philosophy,  myth,  and  legalized  tradition."  Plutarch  had  re- 
spect for  the  conception  of  Deity  embodied  in  the  Demiurgus 
of  the  Timseus,  the  One  and  Absolute  of  the  Pythagoreans, 
the  UpCjTov  Kivodv^  the  N677<^ts,  or  NoTfo-ews  vdTjo-ts  of  Aristotlc,  the  im- 
manent World-Soul,  or  A670S  6iu  ry  "TXjof  the  Stoics,  etc.  But 
"  the  metapliysical  Deity  thus  created  from  these  diverse  ele- 
ments is  made  personal  by  the  direct  ethical  relation  into  which 
He  is  brought  with  mankind."  '*  And  I  am  of  opinion,"  says 
this  ancient  pliilosopher,^  "  that  the  blessedness  of  that  eternal 
life  wliich  belongs  to  God  consists  in  the  knowledge  which 
gives  Him  cognizance  of  all  events ;  for  take  away  knowledge 
of  things,  and  the  undei'standing  of  them,  and  imuKjrtality  is 
no  longer  life,  but  mere  duration.''  The  Divine  One  must,  then, 
be  conceived  of  as  the  life  of  a  Knower  who  rejoices  in  his 
knowledge,  and  who  is  on  account  of  that  knowledge  an  inex- 
liaustil>le  fountain  of  feeling  worthy  to  \)e  called  blessedness. 
It  must,  indeed,  n(;ver  Ix;  forgotten  tluit  the  diilioulty  of  recon- 
ciling a  certiiin  acceptance  of  thetrutlisof  the  popular  polythe- 

» The  UcliKion  of  riutarch,  p.  ST. 

a  Plutarch,  Dc  Isidc  ct  Ubiritlc,  351  E. 


104  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ism  with  a  somewhat  highl}-  spiritual  monotheistic  conception 
of  Deitj  was  for  the  thought  of  antiquity,  and  is  for  the  thought 
of  the  great  multitudes  of  Christian  believers  in  the  present 
day,  by  no  means  the  same  as  that  encountered  by  the  Western 
philosophic  mind.  And  yet  for  all  minds,  and  all  times,  the 
problem  is  essentially  the  same.  Without  feeling  and  moral 
attributes  the  absolute  Will  and  Mind  cannot  become  an  object 
of  religious  belief,  feeling,  and  worship.  And  the  conception 
of  the  Absolute  as  a  "  self-consistent  "  One  falls  apart  as  surely, 
and  becomes  as  intrinsically  absurd,  if  we  rule  out  of  it  all  the 
ethical  factors  as  it  does  if  we  rule  out  of  the  same  conception 
the  factors  of  rationality.^ 

The  cosmological  argument  as  it  advances  along  the  lines 
drawn  by  man's  sesthetical  conceptions,  ideals,  and  develop- 
ment, pursues  a  course  similar  to  that  of  the  so-called  "  moral 
argument," — not  identical  with  it,  or  strictly  parallel  to  it,  but 
crossing  it  back  and  forth  at  many  points.  Here  the  facts  are, 
in  important  respects,  essentially  the  same.  That  the  race  has 
created  for  itself  ideals  of  sublimity  and  beauty,  and  that  in 
thought  the  mind  gives  an  objective  character  and  apprecia- 
tive estimate  to  whatever,  in  concrete  forms,  seems  to  embody 
these  ideals,  are  matters  of  undoubted  fact.  The  reflective 
treatment  of  such  facts,  in  its  search  for  a  rational  ground, 
seems  to  make  clear  that  the  race  recognizes  in  whatever  is  re- 
garded as  beautiful,  or  sublime,  some  manifestation  of  the 
unchanging  characteristics  of  an  ideal  Personal  Life.  The 
necessity  for  finding  the  ontological  source  and  ultimate  ex- 
planation of  this  experience  in  the  World-Ground,  conceived  of 
as  an  absolutely  sublime  and  perfectly  beautiful  self-conscious 
Spirit,  is  not,  indeed,  the  same  as  that  felt  by  the  mind 
when  dwelling  upon  the  phenomena  of  man's  ethical  develop- 
ment.    Yet  somehow,  the  "  cosmic  process  "  has  evolved  ''the 

1  This  is  eminently  true  of  Mr.  Bradley's  efforts  to  construct  the  Idea  of 
the  Absolute  as  "self-consistent"  and  yet  "non-moral."  See  his  Appear- 
ance and  Reality,  pp.  430^. 


THE  ARGUMENT  RECONSTRUCTED  105 

sesthetical  man  "  as  well  as  "  the  ethical  man."  And  if  man  were 
not  sesthetical,  as  well  as  ethical,  he  could  not  be  the  religious 
personality  which  he  certainly  is.  The  conclusion  that  the 
source  of  his  sesthetical  experience  must  be  found  in  the 
sesthetical  Being  of  the  World-Ground  is  certainly  somewhat 
vague  and  difficult  to  state  in  logical  terms,  ^sthetical  expe- 
rience itself  is,  essentially  considered,  largely  a  matter  of  inar- 
ticulate emotions  and  sentiments.  But  the  very  mysterious, 
expansive,  and  inexpressible  character  of  these  sentiments  and 
ideals  fits  them  the  better  to  suggest  and  to  confirm  faith  in  the 
reality  of  the  Object  which  goes  farthest  in  the  direction  of 
satisfying  their  demands.  Humanity's  thirst  for  the  sublime 
and  the  beautiful  knows  not,  indeed,  precisely  what  it  wants  : 
it  therefore  none  the  less,  but  even  all  the  more,  is  an  un- 
quenchable thirst. 

At  every  turn,  then,  along  the  pathway  of  exploration  into 
the  conception  of  God  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  it  will  be  found 
that  the  combined  impulse  of  sesthetical  and  ethical  feeling  is 
present  in  power,  and  that  the  ideals  of  moral  goodness,  and  of 
sublimity  and  beauty,  tend  to  converge  and  to  appear  as,  after 
all,  only  different  aspects  of  the  One  Ideal-Real. 

In  this  attempt  at  a  reconstruction  of  the  argument  for  the 
Being  of  God  we  shall  for  the  present  add  notliing  by  way  of 
a  so-called  *' historical  argument."  All  argument,  it  hiis  al- 
ready been  said,  even  the  most  speculative,  must  constantly 
cling  f(ust  to  the  facts  of  history,  and  must  proceed  on  its  way 
with  full  allowance  of  respect  for  the  historical  method.  In- 
deed, from  a  certiin  point  of  view  it  may  be  claimed  that  the 
one  and  only  lugument  in  the  liistorical.  For  the  historj'  of 
the  evolution  in  humanity  of  the  l>elief  in  God  as  perfect  Eth- 
ical Spirit  is  tlui  all-inclusive  and  satisfactory  proof  of  the  real- 
ity of  the  Objc^ct  answering  to  the  Ix'liof. 

In  ordur,  liowever,  to  make  this  argument,  which  is  l)Oth 
historical  and  speculative,  the  more  convincing,  it  must  be  sul>- 
jected  to  a  detailed  examination — especially  at  several  critical 


106  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

points.  In  this  examination  two  sets  of  considerations  must 
be  given  the  great  weight  which  they  deserve.  These  are  (1) 
the  evidences  of  a  Development,  as  applied  to  the  progressive 
realization  of  the  eudaemonistic,  ethical,  and  sesthetical  ideals 
of  the  race ;  and  (2)  the  more  permanent  faiths,  hopes,  and 
practical  results  of  man's  best  religious  Experience — above  all, 
of  that  which  is  embodied  in  the  religion  of  Christ.  Argu- 
ment and  reasoning,  logically  conducted,  there  must  be ;  bat 
the  argument  must,  at  every  step  in  its  advance,  respect  the 
truths  supported  by  these  two  sets  of  considerations. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

GOD  AS  INFINITE  AND  ABSOLUTE 

The  conflict  which  has  been  waged  from  antithetic  points  of 
view,  and  between  contradictory  conclusions,  through  the  at- 
tempt to  use  the  words  "  infinite  "  and  *'  absolute  "  in  relation  to 
the  Object  of  religious  faith,  is  one  of  long  standing.  This  fact 
is  certainly  indicative  of  difficulties  inherent  in  the  conception  of 
a  Pei-sonal  Absolute ;  and  these  difficulties  cannot  be  said  to  have 
been  wholly  resolved  at  the  present  time.  But  to  admit  tliis 
truth  is  by  no  means  the  same  as  to  say  that  all  the  grounds  of 
the  conflict  render  its  perpetual  waging  inevitable ;  even 
less,  that  the  continuance  of  the  conflict  hitherto  shows  the 
conception  to  be  self-contradictory  or  absurd.  On  the  one 
hand,  history  teaches  us  how  the  human  mind,  in  its  effort  to 
escape  from  the  limitations,  and  even  the  degrading  elements, 
of  that  conception  of  Deity  which  the  lower  forms  of  re- 
ligion have  espoused  has  tried  the  extreme  of  negation.  It  hiis 
shaken  off  contemptuously  all  the  seemingly  anthropomorphic 
and  authropopatliic  factors.  In  this  way  progress  toward  a 
purer  and  more  defensible  monotheistic  conception  of  God  hiis 
been  made  possible.  But  on  the  otlier  hand,  the  ethical  and 
SBsthetical  demands  to  which  the  experience  of  religion  gives 
rise,  and  to  which  this  experience  is  itself  in  turn  subject,  lead 
the  mind  to  reject  as  unsatisfactory  the  barren  and  abstract 
notion  covered  by  such  phnii^es  as'*  The  Infinite,"  or  *' The 
Absolute."  Thus  polytheism  and  pantheism  contribute  irrec- 
oncilable factors  to  the  human  conception  of  G(kI.  Periods 
of  that  dugmatiam  which  cLiims  to  have  sounded  to  it^  depths 


108  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  Divine  Being,  and  to  have  systematized  for  faith  all  his 
attributes  and  his  relations  to  the  world,  alternate  with  an  ag- 
nosticism which  goes  to  the  length  of  asserting  that  finite  minds 
do  not  know  and  never  can  know,  anything  about  God. 
Neither  of  these  conclusions,  however,  satisfies  for  any  long 
time  the  great  majority  of  thoughtful  minds. 

It  is  a  reasonable  claim  when  we  are  told^  that  Brahmanism, 
with  its  doctrine  of  the  Being  of  God,  and  its  goal  of  religion 
as  a  mystical  union  of  the  finite  Self  with  God,  has  truth  in  it 
which  Christianity  and  the  philosophy  of  religion  must  recog- 
nize. What  kind  of  Being,  however,  must  be  attributed  to 
God  ?  and,  How,  in  view  of  the  answer  to  this  question,  must 
the  supreme  goal  of  religion  be  understood  ?  A  **  metaphysics- 
shy,  purely  practical  Christianity,"  or  a  purely  "  pragmatical 
philosophy,"  cannot  reply  to  either  of  these  questions.  The 
reply  which  we  are  trying  to  establish,  rejects  the  abstract  Ab- 
solute of  Brahmanism  and  of  all  similar  religious  philosophies  ; 
on  the  other  hand,  it  defines  the  Being  of  God  as  active,  ethi- 
cal, spiritual.  It  affirms  that  God  is  at  one  and  the  same  time, 
infinite  and  absolute,  and  also  perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  By  this 
affirmation  it  aims  to  avoid  the  errors  of  agnosticism  and  pan- 
theism, on  the  one  hand  ;  and  on  the  other,  it  rejects  all  forms  of 
Dualism  which  find  the  ultimate  Ground  of  any  part  of  the  expe- 
rienced world  of  finite  existences  and  events  in  some  other  Being 
than  God ; — whether  in  "  Law,"  or  the  "  Nature  of  things," 
or  in  some  limiting  personal  existences,  such  as  a  kingdom  of 
evil,  or  a  personal  Devil,  or  what  not. 

The  more  recent  discussions  of  such  conceptions  as  are  pos- 
sible or  tenable,  under  the  terms  "  Infinite  "  and  "  Absolute," 
have  undoubtedly  helped  to  harmonize  differences  and  to  clear 
up  obscurities.  In  the  field  of  pure  mathematics,  where  the 
notion  of  infinity  has  been  most  easily  and  properly  allowed,  as 
it  were,  to  roam  at  large,  certain  valuable  restrictions  have  now 
been  put  upon  its  use.  As  a  purely  negative  notion  it  can  no 
1  See  A.  Domer,  Grundriss  der  Religionsphilosophie,  p.  168/. 


GOD  AS  INFINITE  AND  ABSOLUTE  109 

longer,  even  in  mathematics,  be  involved  in  self-contradictions 
that  are  introduced  by  applying  to  its  treatment  the  methods 
of  an  a  priori  and  demonstrative  proof.  To  show  that  Achilles 
cannot  overtake  the  tortoise,  or  that  the  arrow  cannot  fly,  by 
an  abstract  analysis  of  the  notions  of  infinity  and  infinitesimals 
is  to  juggle  with  words,  by  shifting  the  content  of  their  meanings, 
in  and  out,  with  the  dexterity  of  a  practiced  prestidigitateur.  In 
mathematics,  then,  one  must  always  tell  what  sort  of  an  infinite 
— be  it  line,  succession  of  separate  points,  series  of  numbers,  or 
extension  of  surface — one  is  talking  about ;  and  without  some 
noun  of  positive  content  to  qualify  the  negative  qualification, 
no  denial  of  limit  can  logically  take  place.  Moreover,  in  the 
argument,  the  character  of  the  infinity  which  is,  so  to  say, 
made  the  subject  of  the  argument,  must  remain  unchanged 
throughout. 

The  advances  of  physical  science  in  the  knowledge  of  the 
world  as  a  system  of  interrelated  and  interacting  things  and 
minds,  as  well  as  the  psychological  analysis  of  the  cognitive 
act  itself,  forbid  all  attempts  to  treat  the  conception  of  the 
Absolute  as  purely  negative  and  unlimited.  First  of  all,  and 
in  importiince  above  all,  must  the  true  doctrine  of  God  as  In- 
finite and  Absolute  be  distinoruished  from  the  neo^ative  doc- 
trine  of  the  ancient  Greek  and  Hindu  philosophy;  and  as  well 
from  the  fast  vanishing,  purely  agnostic  or  pantheistic  type.^ 
The  motto  of  the  latter  is  ever  No,  No  ;  and  whatever  goes 
beyond  this  is  held  to  be  significant  of  illusion  or  self-ileception. 
The  absolutism  of  tlie  theistic  conception  is,  on  the  contrary, 
in  the  form  of  an  ever  enlarging,  loftier,  and  more  comprehen- 
sive affirmation. 


»  According  to  Tigert  (Theism,  etc.,  p.  39/.),  with  one  exception,  "Per- 
haps no  com[>ctent  thinker  of  the  present  day  holds  that  our  notion  of  the 
infinite  is  (merely?)  negative."  Although  there  is  no  doubt  much  histori- 
cal warrant  for  the  cluirge  of  Max  Miilk-r  (Anthropological  Religion,  p,  101) 
thiit  Christian  theology  has  held  the  negative  conception  of  God,  it  ctinnot 
now  be  urged  against  its  more  gifted  teachers. 


no  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

The  harsher  contradictions  and  graver  difficulties  which  have 
been  introduced  into  the  conception  of  God  as  Infinite  and  Ab- 
solute Person  are  removed  when  the  following  three  considera- 
tions are  borne  in  mind.  Without  some  preliminary  agreement 
the  disputants  cannot,  in  any  intelligible  way,  take  even  the 
first  steps  in  this  argument.  For  it  is  only  when  starting  from 
points  of  view  thus  established,  that  argument  is  appropriate 
to  the  problem  at  all ;  or,  indeed,  that  any  problem  can  be  set 
clearly  before  the  mind. 

And  first :  To  identify  the  Infinite  or  the  Absolute  with  the 
Unknowable  or  the  Unrelated  is  absurd.  To  know  is  to  re- 
late ;  and  all  knowing  is,  in  respect  of  one  group  of  its  most 
essential  elements  or  factors,  relating  activity.  Thinking  is 
relating  ;  and  although  thinking  is  not  the  whole  of  knowing, 
knowledge  and  the  growth  of  knowledge  are  impossible  with- 
out thought.  Moreover,  all  human  knowing  is  finite ;  man's 
knowledge  of  the  Infinite  and  Absolute  God  is  a  very  finite 
and  relative  kind  of  knowledge.  But  to  speak  of  the  knowl- 
edge of  God,  the  Infinite,  as  impossible,  because  the  knowing 
mind  is  finite ;  or  of  God,  the  Absolute,  as  impossible,  because 
knowing  is  essentially  relating ; — this  is  so  to  mistake  the  very 
nature  of  mental  life  as  to  render  the  objection  nugatory  and 
ridiculous.  This  strange  psychological  fallacy,  although  it  so 
frequently  entraps  writers  to  whom  credit  must  be  given  for 
ordinary  acquaintance  with  mental  phenomena,  scarcely  de- 
serves other  treatment  than  a  reference  to  the  most  elementary 
psychological  principles.  Man's  cognitive  capacity  is  not  to 
be  compared  with  the  capacity  of  some  material  vessel ;  the 
content  of  the  mind  is  not  to  be  likened  to  the  contents  of  a 
wooden  measure.  As  to  "  The  Infinite  "="  the  Unknowable," 
or  "  The  Absolute  "="  the  Unrelated,"  we  are  indeed  warranted 
in  affirming :  "  Such  a  metaphysical  idol  we  can  never,  of 
course,  know,  for  it  is  cunningly  devised  after  the  pattern  of 
what  knowledge  is  not."  ^ 

1  Schurman,  Belief  in  God,  p.  117. 


GOD  AS  INFINITE  AND  ABSOLUTE  111 

But,  secondly,  the  words  "  infinite  "  and  *'  absolute  "  as  ap- 
plied to  God  cannot  be  used  with  a  merely  negative  significance. 
Absolutely  negative  conceptions  are  not  conceptions  at  all ; 
thinking  and  imagining  cannot  be  wholly  negative  ;  words  that 
have  no  positive  meaning  are  not  words,  are  not  in  any  respect 
signs  or  symbols  of  mental  acts.  Preeminently  true  is  all  this 
of  an  Idea  so  infinitely  rich  in  content  as  that  arrived  at  by 
thought,  when,  reflecting  upon  the  significance  for  Reality  of 
man's  total  experience,  it  frames  the  ultimate  explanation  of 
it  all  in  terms  of  infinite  and  absolute  self-conscious  and  rational 
Will.  In  arguing  about  the  possibility  of  an  Infinite  Personal- 
ity this  rule,  which  forbids  laying  all  the  empliasis  on  the  ne- 
gation, must  always  be  rigidly  observed.  Personal  qualifi- 
cations do  not  necessarily  lose  their  characteristic  personal 
quality,  when  it  is  affirmed  that  certain  particular  limitations, 
under  which  we  are  accustomed  to  experience  them,  must  be 
thought  of  as  removed.  No  removal  of  the  limit  destroys,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  the  essential  nature  of  the  qualification  it- 
self. 

Yet,  again, — to  express  essentially  the  same  cautionary  truth 
in  another  way — the  words  "  infinite  "  and  "  absolute  "  as  ap- 
plied to  God  must  always  be  taken  with  an  adjectival  significa- 
tion ;  they  are  predicates  defining  the  character,  as  respects  its 
limit,  of  some  positive  factors  of  the  God-Idea.  "  The  Infinite," 
**  the  Aljsolute," — these  and  all  similar  phrases,  wlien  left  wholly 
undefined — are  barren  al)stractions  ;  they  are,  too  often,  only 
meaningless  sound.  The  negative  and  sceptical  conclusions, 
which  it  is  attempted  to  embody  in  this  way,  are  controverted 
by  all  the  tendencies  of  the  modern  sciences — physical  lus  well 
as  mental.  All  tliese  sciences,  in  their  most  comprehensive 
conclusions  and  highest  speculative  flights,  point  toward  the 
conception  of  a  lenity  of  Reality,  a  Subject  (or  TVtiV/f  r)  for 
the  phenomena.  The  Oneness  of  all  b'ings  that  are  **real," 
we  may  call  the  lieing  of  tlu;  World.  I')Ut,as  has  already  l)een 
seen,  we  can  nut  rest  in  this  abstniction.     What  really  is  this 


112  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Being  which  has  the  manifold  qualities,  and  performs  the  varied 
operations?  This  Subject  of  all  the  predicates,  we  desire  more 
positively  to  know.  Meantime,  we  call  it  Absolute  ;  because, 
Itself  unconditioned.  It  is  the  Ground  of  all  conditions.  We 
call  it  Infinite ;  because.  Itself  unlimited  from  without,  or 
Self-limited,  It  sets  the  limits  for  all  finite  and  dependent  exis- 
tences. 

In  speaking,  then,  of  God  as  Infinite  and  Absolute  Person, 
or  Self,  it  is  not  meant  simply  to  deny  that  the  limitations 
which  belong  to  all  finite  and  dependent  things  and  selves  ap- 
ply to  Him  ;  it  is  also  meant  positively  to  affirm  the  confidence 
that  certain  predicates  and  attributes  of  Personal  Life  reach 
their  perfection,  and  are  harmoniously  united  in  the  self- 
conscious  and  rational  Divine  Will.  It  follows  from  this  that 
the  conceptions  of  infinity  and  absoluteness  apply  to  the  differ- 
ent predicates  and  attributes  of  a  person,  in  quite  different 
ways.  Thus  a  Personal  God  can  be  spoken  of  as  "  infinite,"  in 
any  precise  meaning  of  this  term,  only  as  respects  those  as- 
pects or  activities  of  personal  life  to  which  conceptions  of 
quantity  and  measure  can  intelligibly  be  applied.  His  infinite- 
ness  of  power  for  example  becomes  his  omnipotence ;  his  in- 
finiteness  of  knowledge  his  omniscience  ;  his  complete  freedom 
from  control  by  the  limiting  conditions  of  forces  that  act  in 
space  becomes  his  omnipresence,  etc.  To  such  moral  attri- 
butes, however,  as  wisdom,  justice,  goodness,  and  ethical  love, 
the  negating  aspect  of  the  conception  of  infinity  does  not  ap- 
ply, except  in  a  figurative  way  which,  by  being  mistaken,  may 
become  misleading.  It  is  at  once  more  intelligible,  appropriate, 
and  safe,  to  speak  of  the  perfection  of  God  in  respect  of  these 
moral  attributes.  For  the  very  conception  of  measure  and 
quantity,  strictly  understood,  has  nothing  to  do  with  moral 
dispositions  or  attributes,  as  such  ;  but  only  with  the  number 
of  the  objects  toward  which  the  corresponding  acts  of  will 
go  forth.  An  infinitely  wise  person  is  one  whose  wisdom  is 
perfect  as   respects  all  other  beings  ;  but  this  perfection  of 


GOD  AS  INFINITE  AND  ABSOLUTE  113 

wisdom  could  not  be  unless  the  same  person  were  omniscient, 
omnipotent,  and  perfectly  good. 

By  calling  God  "absolute  "  it  is  meant,  on  the  one  hand,  to 
deny  that  he,  in  respect  of  his  Being  or  of  any  of  its  manifes- 
tations, is  dependent  on  any  other  than  his  own  self-conscious, 
rational  Will.  No  others,  no  finite  things  and  selves  belonging 
to  the  world  of  which  man  has  experience,  constitute  the  original 
ground  and  reason  of  the  divine  limitations,  whether  of  power, 
knowledge,  wisdom,  or  love.  He  is,  in  his  essential  nature, 
a5-solved,  absolute,  as  respects  dep  'ndence  upon  others.  But, 
positively  considered,  his  absoluteness  is  such  that  He  is 
the  One  on  whom  all  beings,  both  things  and  selves,  are 
dependent.  In  his  self-conscious  rational  Will,  finite  existences 
and  events  liave  their  Ground.  Outride  of  this  self-conscious 
rational  Will,  no  real  uniting  principle  for  the  cosmic  existences, 
forces,  and  events,  can  anywhere  be  found. 

In  brief,  by  speaking  of  God  as  Infinite  and  Absolute  the 
philosophy  of  religion  means  to  afifirm  that  there  are  no  limi- 
tiitions  to  the  self-conscious  rational  will  of  God  which  can 
arise  elsewhere  than  in  this  same  self-conscious  rational  Will. 
God  is  dependent  on  no  other  being  for  such  limitiitions  as 
his  will  chooses  to  observe.  God  wills  his  own  limitations. 
And  he  would  not  be  infinite,  or  absolute,  or  morally  perfect, 
if  he  did  not.  Will  that  is  not  self-controlled,  or  limited  by 
the  reason  or  purposes  known  to  the  Self,  is  not  rational,  or 
morally  perfect  will.  On  the  other  hand,  all  finite  and  de- 
pendent beings  and  events  do  have  the  original  ground  and 
final  purpose  of  their  l)eing  and  happening  in  this  same  Divine 
Will.  All  the  many  finite  and  dependent  lyings  have  the 
only  satisfactory  explanation  of  their  existence  and  their  na- 
tures in  the  Infinite  and  Aljsolute  One ;  and  this  infinite  and 
alwolute  Being  is  the  Personality  whom  faith  calls  God. 

The  objections  to  so  thorout^h<roinga  {U)ctrine  of  the  infinite- 
ness  and  absoluteness  of  the  Divine  Being  arise  chiefly  on 
two  grounds.     They  are  either  predominatingly  metaphysical 

8 


114  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

or — perhaps  it  would  be  more  accurate  to  say  psychological ; — 
or  else  they  are  ethical.  The  metaphysical  objections  revive  the 
claim  that  self-conscious  personal  Being  cannot  be  infinite  and 
absolute ;  the  ethical  objections  interpose  cautions  and  fears 
connected  with  the  integrity  and  practical  value  of  the  moral 
and  religious  life.  The  former  may  be  removed  by  a  pro- 
founder  metaphysics  based  upon  a  truer  psychological  analysis  ; 
the  latter  may  be  reassured  by  showing  the  way  to  a  more 
philosophically  satisfying  and  tenable  kind  of  faith. 

In  considering  critically  the  first  class  of  objections  the 
thought  is  brought  back  to  the  point  at  which  the  argument 
was  left  unfinished  in  the  last  Chapter  (see  p.  83/).  It  can  now 
be  made  clear  that  these  objections  derive  their  power  to  con- 
fuse and  deter  the  mind,  largely  through  their  misuse  of  the 
terms  "infinite"  and  "absolute."  That  a  self-conscious  and 
personal  being  cannot  be  also  conceived  of  as  infinite  and 
absolute  turns  out  by  no  means  the  self-evident  proposition 
which  it  is  assumed  to  be.  Indeed,  certain  indications  point 
in  the  opposite  direction.  Even  our  human,  finite,  and  de- 
pendent self-consciousness  does  not  have  its  essential  charac- 
teristics described  by  such  terms  as  finite  and  dependent; 
much  less  by  such  meaningless  terms  as  wo^infinite  or  not- 
absolute.  In  other  words,  there  is  nothing  in  the  essential  na- 
ture of  self-consciousness,  as  we  know  it,  to  show  that  the 
range  of  its  grasp,  either  as  respects  the  number  of  its  objects 
or  its  speed  in  time,  determines  the  possibility  of  its  very 
existence.  On  the  contrary,  the  more  perfect  our  self-con- 
sciousness becomes,  the  more  manifold  are  the  objects  Avhich  it 
clearly  displays  within  the  grasp  of  the  one  activity  of  appre- 
hending the  Self.  Human  self-consciousness  is,  indeed,  a 
development;  and  at  its  highest  degree,  whether  considered  as 
respects  the  multitude  of  its  objects,  or  their  relations  to  each 
other  and  to  the  Self,  is  a  meagre,  a  limited  affair.  It  is 
always  dependent  upon  conditions  over  which  the  self-con- 
scious Self  has  no  control,  either  direct  or  indirect.     But  in  it 


GOD  AS  INFINITE  AND  ABSOLUTE  115 

is  the  very  type  and  supreme  example  of  clear,  certain,  and 
ontologically  valid  knowledge.  The  amount  of  the  small  ap- 
proaches, which  the  human  mind  can  make  in  the  direction  of 
becoming  like  the  Infinite  and  Absolute  Mind,  is  tested  by  the 
increase,  and  not  by  the  decrease,  of  the  region  covered  by  the 
individuaFs  self-conscious  life.  The  richer  and  more  compre- 
hensive the  individual's  self-consciousness  becomes,  the  more 
do  the  limitations  of  his  finiteness  recede.  The  more  the  Self 
immediately  and  certainly  knows  of  itself,  tlie  more  it  is  ca- 
pable of  knowing  about  other  selves  and  tilings.  Thus  does 
the  individual  Self  become  a  larger  and  clearer  "  mirror  of  the 
World."  For  example,  in  cases  of  intimate  friendship  between 
human  beings,  the  one  person  may  come  to  know  another  per- 
son with  a  suddenness,  clearness,  and  certainty  of  intuition, 
whicli  converts  the  ordinarily  slow,  obscure,  and  uncertain 
inferences  that  serve  us  men  for  knowing,  or  rather  guessing 
at,  the  thoughts  of  others,  into  the  semblance  of  a  satisfactory 
and  genuine  self-consciousness.  And  great  minds,  who  ob- 
serve with  a  loving  sympathy  the  transactions  and  laws  of  the 
physical  world,  rise  at  times  to  experiences  which  seem  to 
approach,  if  they  do  not  attain,  the  likeness  of  an  intuitive 
envisagement  of  Nature's  deeds  and  of  the  meaning  of  those 
deeds.  In  general,  the  more  of  objects  and  relations  the 
human  mind  can  take  up  into  its  own  apperceptive  and  self- 
conscious  experience,  the  more  freed  from  limitations  this 
finite  and  dependent  mind  becomes.  The  perfectirnj  of  self- 
ccmsciousness  tends  to  raise  the  mind  toward  a  more  houndhss 
and  absolute  knowledge. 

Rut  it  is  urged  that  self-consciousness,  since  it  involves  the 
distinction  of  subject  and  object,  and  implies  the  setting  of  the 
Self  over  against  the  non-self,  is  essentially  an  affair  of  limita- 
tion and  of  dependent  relation  to  some  otli»»r  than  the  Self. 
That  self-consciousness  is,  in  fact,  for  all  human  selves  thus 
limited  and  dej)en(h'nt^  may  \n*  admitted  as  often  as  the  ob- 
jector will.       Why    need  keep  on    repeating  that,    of  course, 


116  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

this  is  so?  But  when  this  human  limitation  and  dependence, 
in  fact,  is  converted  into  an  essential  characteristic  of  Self- 
Being  as  such,  the  argument  violates  every  truth  with  which 
the  study  of  the  phenomena  seems  to  make  us  familiar.  And 
the  use  of  the  words  infinite  and  absolute  reaches  the  height 
of  their  misuse,  when  the  object  of  self-consciousness  becomes 
invested  with  a  sort  of  mystical  negating  and  limiting  power. 
Thus,  my  Self  considered  as  object,  is  declared  in  some  sort  to 
hedge  in  and  confine  the  activity  of  my  same  Self,  considered 
as  subject.  Under  this  view,  the  more  the  extension  of  the  ob- 
ject is  increased,  the  more  the  intensity  and  reality  of  the  sub- 
ject should  be  diminished.  On  the  contrary,  in  the  growth  of 
a  Self,  the  subject  becomes  more  real  according  as  it  is  able  to 
unite  in  the  grasp  of  its  conscious  life  a  greater  number  of  ob- 
jects,— whether  these,  its  objects  be  its  own  states  or  so-called 
"  external  objects."  For  in  the  cognitive  act  the  relation  of  sub- 
ject and  object  is  not,  essentially  considered,  one  in  which  the 
two  limit  each  other ;  it  is,  the  rather,  a  relation  whose  essence 
is  a  living  commerce  of  realities.  In  the  knowledge  of  self- 
consciousness  this  commerce  is  between  different  aspects  of 
essentially  one  and  the  same  reality. 

It  is,  therefore,  the  perfection  of  the  self-consciousness  of  God 
which  makes  it  possible  to  predicate  of  Him  that  He  is  infinite 
and  absolute.  Onl}^  this  conception  of  Him  as  self-conscious 
Spirit  enables  the  mind  to  transcend  the  inscription  on  the 
shrine  of  Athene-Isis  at  Sais :  "  I  am  all  that  was,  and  all  that 
is,  and  all  that  shall  be  ;  and  my  vail  hath  yet  no  mortal  raised." 
But  this  affirmation  of  the  infinite  and  absolute  character  of  the 
self-conscious  Personal  Life  of  God  is  not  the  equivalent  of  an 
identification  of  all  particulars  under  some  abstract  term  which 
can  only  assert,  but  cannot  account  for,  their  unity.  It  is,  the 
rather,  the  positing  of  sucli  an  all-comprehending  and  unifying 
Principle  as  only  the  conception  of  a  Personal  Absolute  can  sup- 
ply. It  permits  the  mind  to  conceive  of  God's  knowledge  as 
always  having  that  perfect  immediacy,  comprehensiveness,  car- 


GOD  AS  INFINITE  AND  ABSOLUTE  117 

tainty,  value  for  truth,  of  which  man's  faint,  limited,  and  meagre 
self-consciousness  is,  nevertheless,  the  highest  type  of  our  hu- 
man experience.  It  also  bids  the  mind  to  regard  all  finite 
beings  and  events  as  essentially  and  constantly  dependent  upon 
the  self-conscious  and  rational  Will  of  God.  Thus  all  objects 
become  objects  of  the  Divine  Self-consciousness. 

The  ethical  recoil  from  certain  conclusions,  to  leap  to  which 
from  the  standpoint  of  such  a  postulate  of  the  infiniteness  and 
absoluteness  of  God  seems  required  by  logical  consistency,  is 
deserving  of  the  utmost  tenderness  and  patient  consideration. 
Further  treatment  of  tliis  objection  must  be  deferred  to  the 
discussion  of  the  moral  qualifications,  and  of  the  ethical  rela- 
tions to  the  world,  which  religion  attributes  to  God.  But  one 
most  fundamental  truth  should  be  stated  in  this  connection. 
No  one  of  the  predicates  or  attributes  of  personal  being  can 
be  conceived  of  in  a  perfectly  unHmited  or  absolute  way.  No 
one  of  them  is  a  solitary  affair.  Of  necessity,  they  limit  each 
other ;  and  both  in  their  essence,  and  in  their  manifestation, 
they  are  mutually  dependent.  Selfhood  is  not  a  merely  unre- 
stricted aggregate  of  independent  activities.  And  instead  of 
its  perfection  requiring  or  permitting  the  increase  of  the  un- 
limited and  independent  exercise  of  any  of  these  activities,  tlie 
truth  is  quite  the  contrary.  No  finite  Self  makes  progress  to- 
wards an  escape  from  its  limitations  by  letting  its  psychic 
forces  loose  from  tlie  control  of  wisdom  and  goodness.  Neither 
can  wisdom  and  goodness  grow  in  any  liuman  Self  while  the 
core  of  selfhood,  the  control  of  will,  is  slipping  away.  The 
very  constitution  of  pei*s()nality  is  such  that  its  different  attri- 
butes are  nnitually  dependent,  reciprocally  limited.  And  the 
nicer  and  more  harmonious  the  adjustment  becomes,  in  which 
wisdom  and  goodness  guide  power,  and  power  greatens  under 
their  c(jntrol,  and  for  the  execution  of  their  ends,  tlie  nearer 
does  persf)nality  api)roaeh  toward  the  typt?  of  the  infniite  and 
the  absoluU;.  Or — to  cease  from  so  abstract  a  manner  of 
speaking — growth  toward  the  perfection  of  jHirsonality  can  bo 


118  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

attained,  only  as  the  various  forces  of  personal  activity,  not  only 
become  greater  in  amount,  but  also  more  harmoniously  active 
in  the  unity  of  the  one  personal  life. 

On  applying  these  considerations  to  the  Divine  Being  our 
conclusion  is  not  hidden,  nor  does  it  lie  far  away.  Because 
God  is  essentially  personal,  a  self-conscious  and  rational  Will, 
the  different  predicates  and  attributes  under  which  he  must  be 
conceived,  are  self-limiting  and  se(/-consistent.  This  is  to  say 
that  they  limit  each  other  according  to  that  conception  of  per- 
fect personality  which  is  realized  alone  in  God.  But  the  ground 
of  this  limitation  is,  in  no  respect,  essentially  considered,  outside 
of,  or  independent  of,  God  himself.  God's  infinite  power  is  not 
blind  and  brutish  force,  extended  beyond  all  limit  whatsoever 
in  a  purely  quantitative  way ;  God's  infinite  power  is  always 
limited  by  his  perfect  wisdom.  Neither  is  the  divine  omnis- 
cience an  ability  to  know,  or  mentally  to  represent,  as  real  and 
true,  what  is  not  real  or  what  is  irrational.  God's  knowledge  is 
limited  by  the  laws  of  reason ;  but  in  the  case  of  the  omnis- 
cient One,  these  "  laws  "  are  only  the  forms  of  his  absolute,  ra- 
tional Life ;  Reality  is  only  that  to  which  this  Infinite  and 
Absolute  Will  imparts  itself  according  to  these  rational  forms. 

But,  in  even  a  more  special  way,  it  is  to  be  said  that  the 
moral  attributes  of  God  are  self-consistent  limitations  of  certain 
of  the  metaphysical  attributes.  If  the  divine  justice  or  good- 
ness is  to  be  considered  as  perfect,  then  these  moral  attributes 
must  constantly  and  completely  qualify  the  divine  omnipo- 
tence. And  to  say  that  God  "cannot"  do  wrong,  when  once 
one  is  satisfied  that  his  righteousness  is  perfect,  is  not  to  limit 
the  divine  power  from  without,  or  to  render  it  any  the  less 
worthy  to  be  called  omnipotence.  In  all  discussion  of  the 
problems  evoked  by  the  attempt  to  apply  such  terms  as  '*  infi- 
nite "  and  "  absolute  "  to  God,  it  is  the  unifying  and  harmo- 
nizing nature  of  his  Personality — or  perfect  self-dependent,  and 
self-consistent  Selfhood — which  affords  both  the  theoretical  and 
the  practical  solution  of  the  same  problems.     How  can  God  be 


GOD  AS  INFINITE  AND  ABSOLUTE  119 

infinite  and  absolute,  and  at  the  same  time  personal?  To  tliis 
inquiry  one  may  answer :  Just  because  he  is  personal.  How 
shall  self-consistency  be  introduced  into  this  complex  of  meta- 
physical predicates  and  moral  attributes  with  which  man's 
religious  feeling  and  philosophical  thought  have  filled  the  con- 
ception of  God  ?  By  more  and  more  expanding  and  perfecting 
this  same  conception  as  that  of  a  perfect,  and  therefore  infinite 
and  absolute  Self. 

The  growth  of  that  Ideal  of  the  Being  of  the  World,  which 
is  represented  by  the  conception  of  God  as  Infinite  and  Ab- 
solute Personal  Life,  has  its  roots  deep  down  in  religious  feel- 
ing and  also  in  philosophical  reflection.  The  impression  made 
upon  the  mind  of  man  by  his  total  environment  is  one  of  mys- 
tery, majesty,  and  illimitaljle  extent  of  force,  in  space  and  in 
time.  What  is  greater  tlian  all  his  eye  can  see,  or  his  hand 
touch,  or  his  intellect  measure  and  comprehend,  but  this  Being 
of  the  World  ;  in  tlie  midst  of  which  he  is  set,  and  of  which  he 
seems  to  himself  so  significant  a  part  ?  In  these  vague  feelings 
religion  and  art  have  their  common  impulse  ;  and  later  on,  if 
not  at  once,  pliilosophy  as  well.  But  science  and  philosopliy 
aim  not  simply  to  feel,  but  also  to  comprehend,  this  mysterious, 
majestic,  and  infinitely  extended  Being  of  the  World.  And 
by  tlieir  studies  of  IT,  tlirough  centuries  of  time,  tliey  arrive  at 
the  conviction  of  the  Unity  of  its  Reality.  This  Being  of  the 
World  LS  not  only  real,  but  it  is  the  exhaustless  Source  of  all 
that  is  actual  ;  and  It  gives  laws  and  life  to  all  the  forms  and 
relations  of  finite  realities.  Such  is  the  reasoned  conviction  that 
cc)mes  to  enforce  the  feeling  of  mystery,  majesty,  and  limitless 
jiowerand  extent,  in  space  and  time,  that  is  called  forth  by  man's 
experience  (^f  the  cosmic  existencios,  forces,  and  processes. 

hi  wliat  terms,  then,  shall  the  mind  best  express  its  grasp 
uf)on  the  Object  of  this  ''reasoned  conviction"?  Tliat  it  is  a 
perfectly  comprehensibh»,  not  to  say  a  perfectly  coinpri*hended, 
conception,  cannot,  of  coui*so,  Ini  maintiiined.  The  r.iost  dog- 
matic theology,  or  self-confident  phikxsophy,  or  boiistful  science, 


120  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

would  scarcely  venture  to  affirm  as  much  as  this.  With  some- 
what different  meanings,  and  yet  in  substantial  unison,  they 
all  confess :  "  There  was  the  door  to  which  I  found  no  key." 
Inasmuch  as  no  finite  thing,  however  mean,  and  no  casual 
event,  however  trifling,  offers  itself  to  man's  mind  in  a  way  to 
ensure  a  complete  comprehension,  one  may  be  the  more  ready 
to  hasten  the  admission :  "  It  is  as  high  as  heaven  ;  what  canst 
thou  do  ?  deeper  than  hell ;  what  canst  thou  know  ?  "  This  at- 
titude of  reflection  is  everywhere  met  in  the  history  of  human 
experience  ;  it  is  the  inevitable  and  logical  result  of  contem- 
plating the  problems  offered  by  this  conception  of  God  as  in- 
finite and  absolute ;  it  is  found  alike  in  pantheistic  theosophy 
and  in  Christian  mysticism.  Hence  it  is  that  Pistis  Sophia^ 
whose  very  title  is  significant  of  the  determination  to  resolve 
faith  into  an  esoteric  theory  of  the  Divine  Being,  makes  Mary 
Magdalene,  when  Jesus  has  solved  for  her  the  first  mystery,  in- 
quire :  ^  "  Now,  therefore,  O  Master,  how  is  it  that  the  first  mys- 
tery hath  twelve  mysteries,  whereas  that  ineffable  hath  but 
one  mystery  ?  "  And  the  Upanishads,  whose  discovery,  says 
Professor  Hopkins,^  is  "  the  relativity  of  divinity"  abound  in 
passages  declaring  the  incomprehensible  character  of  God. 
Scarcely  less  true,  however,  is  this  of  the  Biblical  writings. 
"  But  men,"  declares  a  modern  Hindu  writer,^ ''  for  the  practical 
purposes  of  their  existence,  need  to  get  God  and  not  merelj^  to 
have  a  knowledge  of  Him." 

Neither  this,  nor  any  other  rational  view,  regarding  the  in- 
comprehensible nature  of  the  conception  of  God  as  Infinite  and 
Absolute  is  the  equivalent  of  the  doctrine  that  the  tenet  itself 
is  "inconceivable,"  in  the  meaning  in  which  this  word  is  so  fre- 
quently employed.  The  infiniteness  of  God  cannot,  indeed,  be 
conceived   by  repeated  cumulative  activities  of  the  mind  in  a 

1  See  the  Translation  published  by  the  Theosophical  Society  (London, 
1896),  p.  235. 

2  The  Religions  of  India,  p.  224. 

3  Kishori  Lai  Sarkar,  The  Hindu  System  of  Religious  Science  and  Art,  p. 
137. 


GOD  AS  INFINITE  AND  ABSOLUTE  121 

time-series  ;  or  by  pushing  imagination,  as  it  were,  to  transcend 
at  abound  the  limitations  of  spatial  perception  or  of  the  numer- 
ical expressions  for  sums  of  energy.  But  the  relief  from  such 
futile  attempts  is  by  no  means  to  be  found  in  a  sluggish  re- 
pose of  intellect,  or  in  so-called  faith  in  a  Reality  which  is 
inconceivable,  because  such  faith  implies  the  effort  to  grasp  to- 
gether, in  a  single  ideal,  mutually  exclusive  or  self-contradic- 
tory ideas.  An  irrational  faith  is  no  worthy  substitute  for  an 
irrational  thought. 

The  valid  conclusion  of  our  discussion  is,  the  rather,  that  we 
may — nay,  must — both  believe  in  God,  and  think  God,  in  terms 
of  self-conscious  and  rational,  tliat  Ls,  personal  Life.  And  this 
we  may  do  without  fear  that  the  course  of  our  believing  and 
tliinking  will  be  compelled  to  end,  either  against  an  impassable 
wall  at  the  end  of  a  blind  alley,  or  in  a  bottomless  and  dark- 
some bog,  where  shadows  of  abstractions  allure  the  mind  on  to 
increased  dangers,  but  can  never  lead  it  out  into  a  region  of 
liglit  and  safety.  The  conception  of  God  as  Infinite  and 
Absolute  is,  indeed,  an  ideal  which  can  never  be  exhaustively 
explored,  or  fully  compassed  by  the  finite  mind.  But  just 
as  modern  science,  while  it  is  learning  more  and  more  the  limi- 
tations which  beset  it^  utmost  efforts  to  expound  its  own 
fundamental  conceptions  and  postulates,  nevertheless  un- 
derstands better  and  better  tliese  conceptions,  and  continually 
validates  more  satisfactorily  these  postulates  ;  so  may  it  l)e  with 
the  philos()[)hy  of  religion.  From  similar  efforts,  when  directtnl 
toward  tlie  Object  of  religious  faith,  the  reflective  thinking  of 
mankind  can  never  be  deterred,  whether  by  agnostic  fears,  or 
by  awe  in  the  presence  of  incomprehensible  myst^'ries.  This 
conception  of  (Jfxl  justifies,  while  it  does  not  destroy  but  the 
rather  enliances,  the  profoundest  lesthetical  and  religious  feel- 
ing. Anil  it  is  at  the  same  time  so  increiuiingly  saitisfactory 
to  tlje  reason,  as  tlie  reason  is  employed  in  tlie  growth  of  science 
and  in  the  speculations  of  philosophy,  as  to  entitU?  its  conclu- 
sions to  the  position  of  an  accepted  theory  of  reality. 


CHAPTER   XXXI 

THE  METAPHYSICAL   PREDICATES 

A  distinction  has  already  been  made  (p.  96)  between  those 
ascriptions  which,  in  the  aim  to  define  the  conception  of  God, 
arise  out  of  the  reasoned  conviction  that  He  is  an  Infinite  and 
Absolute  Person,  and  those  which  have  their  origin  rather  in 
the  attempt  to  satisfy  the  emotional  and  practical  interests  of 
religion.  The  former  we  have  called  "metaphysical  predi- 
cates;" the  latter,  "moral  attributes."  And  these  predicates, 
which  our  thought  must  ascribe  to  the  Divine  Being,  in  order 
to  conceive  of  Him  as  Infinite  and  Absolute,  are  chiefly  his 
omnipotence,  omnipresence,  eternity,  omniscience,  and  unity. 
Each  of  these  predicates,  since  each  involves  an  attempt  of  the 
human  mind  to  render  certain  characteristics  of  human  per- 
sonal life  in  terms  that  imply  the  removal  of  the  limits  of 
human  experience,  leads  to  what  is  essentially  mysterious  and 
not  fully  comprehensible.  But  each  of  them  has,  and  retains, 
its  positive  character  and  so  contributes  its  quota  of  the  ele- 
ments necessary  to  the  complete  conception. 

All  religions,  which  have  developed  beyond  the  very  lowest 
stages  of  that  vague  belief  which  characterizes  an  "  unreflect- 
ing spiritism,"  attach  the  same  predicates  to  their  divine  be- 
ings, while  not  in  an  infinite  or  absolute  degree,  at  least  in  a 
degree  relatively  superior  to  that  in  which  human  beings  pos- 
sess the  same  attributes.  The  gods  are  universally  esteemed 
to  be  powerful,  superhu manly  so  ;  they  have  means  of  getting 
about,  so  to  say,  and  thus  of  being  immanent  in  things  and 
near  at  all    times  to  the  worshipper,  which  are  superior  to 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  PREDICATES  123 

those  ordinarily  in  use  among  men.  The  gods  also  know  cer- 
tain matters  which  are  hidden  from  man ;  and  the  knowledge 
of  these  matters  may  best  be  obtained  by  petition  and  propitia- 
tory offerings,  either  directly  by  revelation  from  them,  or 
through  some  one  of  their  specially  favored  means  of  communi- 
cation. If  the  gods  are  not  immortal,  in  the  stricter  meaning 
of  this  word,  they  are  at  least  blessed  with  lives  more  enduring 
than  are  human  mortals ;  the  generations  of  the  gods  are  supe- 
rior to  those  of  mankind.  It  has,  indeed,  required  a  long  and 
painful  process  of  reflection  to  bring  the  mind  of  the  race  to 
the  conception,  in  any  worthy  and  intelligent  way,  of  the  unity 
of  God.  This  conception,  even  as  applied  to  the  human  and 
finite  Self,  is  shifty  and  late  in  its  attainment  of  any  rational 
form.  But  the  growth  of  man's  belief  in  the  Oneness  and 
Aloneness  of  the  Divine  Being  is  the  most  notable  thing,  from 
the  intellectual  and  scientific  point  of  view,  about  his  religious 
development.  In  power  and  knowledge,  in  escape  from  the 
limiting  conditions  of  space  and  time,  the  divine  beings  are 
held  to  be  superior  to  man.  And,  indeed,  it  is  chiefly  for  this 
reason  that  they  are  esteemed  and  worshipped. 

It  has  already  been  shown  that  the  idea  of  Power  is  the  cen- 
tral idea  of  the  beings  regarded  by  mankind  as  worthy  to  be 
considered  as  divine.  Among  primitive  peoples,  says  Brinton,' 
"  the  god  is  one  who  can  do  more  than  man."  The  exciting 
and  nourisliing  source  of  this  belief  is  found  in  those  natural 
phenomena  wliicli  exhibit  energy  ;  and  in  the  cruder  stages  of 
religion,  especially  in  such  happenings  as  thunderstorms, 
eartlirpiakcs,  and  tidal  waves,  where  the  manifestations  of 
enormous  energy  are  most  impressive,  most  completely  beyond 
the  control  of  man,  and  most  fatal  to  his  interests.  To  see 
infinite  power  displayed  in  the  dewdrop,  the  living  cell,  the 
growing  child,  the  corpuscle  or  ion  sending  out  its  emanations, 
and  especially  in  th(»  spiritual  eontrol  and  elevating  of  human 
Bouls,  requires  a  scientific    development   aiul  an    insight  quite 

*  Keligioiia  of  I'rimitive  People*,  p.  81. 


124  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

beyond  the  possibilities  of  the  uncultured  mind.  It  is  not 
strange,  therefore,  that  we  find  the  Australians  saying  that 
Mumpal,  the  Thunderer  personified,  is  the  universal  creator ; 
or  that  Parjanya,  the  rain-cloud  personified,  is  the  "  mighty 
one  "  among  the  Vedic  gods.  In  Hebrew,  Elohim  or  the 
"  strong  ones  "  becomes  the  title  of  Israel's  God  ;  and  Yahweh 
is  extolled  for  his  might  and  majesty  which  are  superior  to 
that  of  all  other  tribal  divinities.  In  Egypt  and  Assyria  the 
deity  is  clothed  with  the  attributes  of  a  mighty  monarch.  In 
the  former  country  this  conception  is  degraded  to  the  extent 
of  providing  tlie  god  with  a  royal  harem  and  other  equipments 
of  royalty  as  known  among  men^  In  this  most  ancient  re- 
ligion the  local  divinity  might  be  called  '*  Lord  of  Ab^^dos,"  or 
"  Mistress  of  Senem  ; "  or  might  be  hailed  as  "  the  Mighty," 
''  the  August,"  or  "  the  Beneficent  " — not  ethically,  but  from 
the  point  of  view  of  a  grand  and  lavish  monarchy.  Thus 
Osiris  was  "  the  Great  One  "  at  Thebes  and  "  the  Sovereign  " 
at  Memphis.  On  each  of  the  massive  blocks  of  limestone, 
with  which  the  broad  way  leading  from  the  East  side  of  th6 
palace  of  Nebuchadnezzar  is  paved,  centuries  ago  was  inscribed 
this  witness  :  "  The  highway  of  Babylon  for  the  procession  of 
the  great  Lord  Merodach."  The  gods  of  the  Greek  and 
Teutonic  mythologies  were  the  "  powers  of  nature,"  or  the 
'*  strong  ones,"  etc.  In  the  naive  monotheism  of  Islam  the 
omnipotence  of  God  is  affirmed  in  the  question  :  '^  "•  Is  not  he 
who  hath  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth  able  to  create  the 
like  thereof  ?  Yea  !  He  is  the  knowing  Creator  ;  His  bidding 
is  only,  when  he  desires  anything,  to  say  unto  it :  Be, — and 

it  IS. 

That  conception  of  the  Omnipotence,  or  unlimited  and  ab- 
solute power,  of  the  Divine  Being,  which  is  warranted  not 
only  by  physical  science  but  also  by  the  reflections  of  philosophy, 
and  which  supports  and  satisfies  religious  experience,  has  both 

1  See  Erman,  ^gypten  und  iEgyptisches  Leben  in  Altertum,  p.  400. 

2  Koran,  Sura  XXXVI. 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  PREDICATES  125 

its  negative  and  its  positive  aspect.  Negatively  taken,  this 
predicate  denies  that  there  is  any  limitation  to  the  divine 
power  which  arises,  or  can  arise,  from  without  the  Divine 
Being.  Conceived  of  as  Power,  God  is  absolute  and  infinite. 
For  the  possession  and  for  the  exercise  of  his  energy  he  is  de- 
pendent on  no  other ;  he  is  bounded  by  no  other.  This  is 
true  of  its  amount,  direction,  occasion  of  expenditure,  and 
whatever  other  conditioning  characteristics  belong  to  all  finite 
displays  of  energy.  Negatively  taken  also,  the  conception  of 
the  divine  omnipotence  denies  that  all  the  hitherto  actual,  or 
all  the  conceivable  exhibitions  of  power,  exhaust  tliis  source 
of  them  all.  The  Divine  Energy  is  to  be  thought  of  as  not 
limited.     It  never  has,  nor  will,  come  to  its  limit  or  its  end. 

It  is  only,  however,  when  the  predicate  of  omnipotence  is 
positively  conceived  that  it  affords  the  requisite  satisfactions 
to  the  emotions  and  practices  of  the  religious  life  of  man.  By 
calling  God  omnipotent  it  is  meant  to  acknowledge  that  all  the 
actual  and  possible  energy  of  finite  beings,  Things  and  Selves, 
lias  its  source  in  Him.  The  inexhaustible  fountain  of  all  the 
cosmic  manifestations  of  energy,  from  the  innumerable  suns 
rushing  with  incredible  velocity  through  boundless  spaces,  to 
the  radio-active  performances  of  those  l>eings  whose  magnitude 
lies  far  below  the  highest  powers  of  the  microscope,  is  the  Will 
of  God.  From  this  same  source  comes  all  the  energy  which 
characterizes  the  experience  and  behavior  of  the  human  Self. 
In  the  Will  of  God,  and  only  in  His  Will,  our  finite  wills  find 
the  explanation  of  their  secondary  and  derived  energizing. 
They  are  not  (^//i/tz potent:  the  potency  they  liave  is  from  the  Om- 
nipotent. In  a  word,  all  the  self-limiting  and  self-determining 
as  well  as  reciprocally  determining,  activity  of  finite  IxMngs 
is  a  derived  power— a  loan  from  the  inexhaustibh;  resources 
of  energy  which  Ixihjng,  of  native  and  inalienable  right,  only 
to  the  Being  of  the  Workl. 

In  th(!  experience  of  religion  this  view  excites  and  supports 
those  feelings  and  that  conduct  which  are  appropriate  to  each 


126  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

particular  case.  If  the  experience  is  filial  piety,  trust,  and 
hope ;  then  the  human  heart  finds  its  most  rational  and  satis- 
factory support  in  this  view.  If  the  experience,  however,  is 
one  of  opposition,  distrust,  or  despair,  then  the  painful  disci- 
pline necessary  to  bring  the  subject  of  the  experience  into  a 
right  adjustment  toward  his  cosmic,  social,  and  ethical  environ- 
ment is  inevitable.  For  the  Omnipotent  Will  is  sweet  or  bit- 
ter to  the  taste  according  to  the  way  it  is  taken.  And  the 
essential  good  of  religion  is  the  increasingly  better  "  squaring  " 
of  the  human  Self,  to  the  larger,  the  environing  and  supporting, 
Infinite  and  Absolute  Self.^ 

The  very  nature  of  the  metaphysical  predicates  of  God  is 
such  that  they  are,  like  the  so-called  categories  of  Being  and 
Thought,  both  mutually  dependent  and  yet,  each  one,  irre- 
solvable into  any  other.  This  is  especially  true  of  the  divine 
omnipotence  and  the  divine  omnipresence.  Negatively  taken, 
the  Omnipresence  of  God  denies  all  limitations  from  space  and 
spatial  conditions,  to  his  will  and  to  his  knowledge.  Nothing 
is,  and  nothing  happens,  where  God  is  not  in  the  fullness  of  all 
his  divine  attributes.  This  process  of  freeing  the  Divine  Be- 
ing from  the  limitations  under  which  the  conditions  of  the 
spatial  attributes  and  spatial  relations  place  the  human  body 
and  mind  has  gone  on  throughout  the  centuries  of  man's  reli- 
gious development.  It  is  a  process  contributed  to  by  the 
scientific  requirements  and  philosophical  aspirations  and  re- 
flections of  the  race.  It  has  been  sometimes  checked  and 
hindered,  and  sometimes  favored  and  refined,  by  those  religious 
feelings  which  demand  the  nearness  of  God  to  the  human  soul. 

The  earlier  and  cruder  forms  of  religion  conceive  of  the 
gods  as,  temporarily  at  least,  embodied  in  some  extended  ob- 
ject, or  as  especially  present  here,  to  the  impairment  or  the 
exclusion  of  their  presence  there.  The  gods  may  be  thought 
of  as  local  divinities.     Only  in  this  way  can  the  untutored 

1  This  thought  is  admirably  wrought  into  Professor  Royce's  discussion  of 
"The  Union  of  God  and  Man,"  The  World  and  the  Individual,  chap.  X. 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  PREDICATES  127 

mind  satisfy  the  heart's  craving  for  some  very  special  and  def- 
inite manifestation  of  God.  Men  want  their  god  to  be  in  their 
neighborhood.  Even  Yahweh  was  conceived  of  as  a  local 
divinity  by  his  worshippers — present  especially,  and  partic- 
ularly powerful,  in  certain  localities.  His  people  could  not 
offer  sacrifices  to  him  in  Egypt,  for  they  were  in  a  "  strange 
land."  The  prophets  themselves  considered  it  offensive  to 
God  to  worship  him  away  from  the  appointed  place.  And 
Jesus  proclaimed  a  heresy,  when  he  told  the  Samaritan  woman 
that  the  true  worship  of  the  Father  was  "  neither  in  this  moun- 
tain nor  at  Jerusalem." 

When  the  growth  of  scientific  knowledge  and  the  conquests 
of  reflective  thinking  have  succeeded  in  banishing,  even  par- 
tially, from  the  minds  of  man,  the  conceptions  which  are  con- 
trary to  the  belief  in  the  omnipresence  of  God,  his  thinking  is  apt 
to  take  either  a  deistic  or  a  pantheistic  form.  The  deistic  con- 
ception virtually  denies  the  divine  universal  presence  by  con- 
ceiving of  God  as  over  against  the  World,  separated  from  it 
in  a  ^wasz-spatial  and  temporal  way.  There  is,  indeed,  the 
World  and  God  ;  but  the  former  is,  at  leastsofar  as  our  knowl- 
edge about  it  goes,  the  construction  and  reconstruction  of  beings 
and  forces,  that,  whatever  their  original  source  may  have  been, 
are  now  to  be  thought  of  as  independent  of  the  univei*sally 
present  Will  of  God.  The  pantheistic  conception,  on  the  con- 
trary, identifies  God  and  the  World  in  such  manner  as  to  save 
the  omnipresence  and  omnipotence  of  his  Being,  at  the  sacrifice 
of  his  self-conscious,  ethical,  and  personal  Life.  All  attempt 
to  adjust  the  claims  of  so-called  "  naturalism  "  and  "  supor- 
naturalism,"  in  their  efforts  to  define  the  relations  of  God  to 
the  sum-total  of  finite  things  iind  finite  selves,  must  be  for  the 
present  postponed.  It  is  enough  in  tliis  connection  to  rei>eat 
that  a  self-consistent  conception  of  God  as  Pci-sonal  Absululo 
is  impossible  without  involving  the  denial  of  all  limitiitions  of 
a  sp;iti;il  order  to  his  j)ow(M'  and  to  liis  presence. 

Positively  taken,  the  predicate  of  omnipresence  as  applied  to 


128  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

God  repeats  the  truth  already  stated  from  other  points  of  view ; 
everywhere  is  the  present  power  and  co-conscious  mind  of  the 
Divine  Being.     Poetically  stated,^  He  is  the  One, — 

"  Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man." 

But  the  deeper  significance  of  this  truth  is  seen  only  when  the 
ontological  value  is  recognized  of  those  mental  activities,  and 
of  those  constitutional  forms  of  mental  life,  in  which  all  human 
space-perceptions  and  space-notions  have  their  origin.  These 
perceptions  and  notions  compel  the  assumptions :  (1)  That  a  cer- 
tain way  of  construing  the  being  and  the  relations  of  all  things 
and  all  selves  is  native  and  inevitable  for  the  human  mind ;  and, 
therefore,  (2)  that  this  way  has  its  ground,  not  solely  in  the 
human  mind,  but  in  the  nature  of  that  reality  which  is  thus 
construed.  *'  In  these  two  assumptions  we  recognize  again  the 
Self  as  a  constructive  and  differentiating  principle,  which  acts 
according  to  its  own  nature  in  its  apprehension  of  a  World  of 
Things."  And  when  the  final  ground  and  explanation  of  this 
agreement  between  Self  and  the  World  is  sought,  the  conclusion 
is  confirmed :  "  The  category  of  space  must  be  referred  for  its 
trans-subjective  ground  to  a  World-Force,  that  arranges  in  a 
determinate  way  all  the  different  beings  of  the  world,  including 
each  Self  whose  pictorial  representation  of  the  spatial  qualities 
and  spatial  relations  of  things  is  determined  by  this  same  Force."  ^ 
Or,  in  the  words  of  Pfleiderer  ^ :  "  God  is  neither  in  space,  nor 
outside  of  space,  but  himself  spaceless,  founds  space — that  is, 
embraces  in  himself  all  that  is  in  space  as  mutually  related,  and 
connects  it  in  himself  to  the  unity  of  the  articulated  whole." 

1  So  in  the  Pharsalia  of  Lucan  (?),  IX,  578,  Cato  is  made  to  ask: 
"Estque  Dei  sedes,  ubi  terra  et  pontus  et  aer 

Et  coelum  et  virtus.     Superos  quid  quserimus  ultra? 
Juppiter  est  quodcumque  vides  quocumque  moveris." 

2  For  these  quotations  and  a  detailed  discussion  of  the  category  of  Space, 
see  the  author's  "A  Theory  of  Reality,"  chap.  IX, 

3  Philosophy  of  Religion,  III,  p.  297. 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  PREDICATES  129 

Rightly  understood,  this  view  of  the  omnipresence  of  God  is 
the  only  rational  and  satisfactory  explanation  and  support  of 
the  highest  and  most  valuable  religious  feeling.  The  shock  of 
vulgar  prejudice  which  follows  the  definite  application  of  this 
profound  and  holy  truth  to  concrete  instances  passes  away, 
when  the  reason  is  lifted  to  the  loftier  and  diviner  point  of 
view.  Is  God  indeed  here,  in  the  fullness  of  His  presence, 
in  this  stone  which  I  build  into  my  dwelling ;  in  this  clod 
which  my  ploughshare  turns  or  on  which  my  careless  foot  is 
treading ;  in  this  bodily  system  of  pulsating  brain  and  beating 
heart  and — it  may  be — even  disordered  and  diseased  system, 
which  I  am  myself  so  likely  to  prostitute  to  uses  unworthy  of 
its  divine  origin  and  significance  ?  Yes,  indeed,  this  is  so. 
And  modern  science  is  doing  royal  service,  as  it  explores  more 
profoundly  with  microscope  and  physical  and  chemical  analysis 
the  nature  of  these  "  common  "  things,  to  extract  all  sting  of 
degradation  or  frivolity  from  such  admissions  as  these.  That 
stone,  that  clod,  or  even  that  diseased  bodily  organ,  is  no  dead, 
insignificant  bit  of  worthless  *'  matter  "  so-called.  It  is  instinct 
with  the  universal  Life  ;  it  embodies  all  the  mysteries  of  exist- 
ence ;  it  may  at  any  moment  become  a  most  important  factor 
in  shaping  the  history  of  the  Universe  and  of  the  race  of 
man. 

As  to  the  body  of  man,  nothing  can  be  more  salutary  from 
the  point  of  view  of  practical  religion  than  the  reminder  of 
the  eminently  Christian  doctrine  tliat  it  is  the  temple  of  tlie 
Holy  Ghost.  And  he  who  can  int4.41igently  say,  and  live  as 
though  he  knew  the  meaning  of  what  he  is  saying, — All  my 
life  of  body  and  soul  is  in  God,  is  a  manifestation  of  his  in- 
dwelling presence  in  wisdom  and  in  power, — has  conqueivd 
th(^  inner  citadel  (jf  ()l)stacles  to  complete  filial  piety.  "  Dost 
thou  not  see,"  says  the  Koran,  *■'  that  God  knows  what  is  in 
the  lioa vena  and  what  is  in  the  earth?  and  that  there  cannot 
1x3  a  privy  discourse  of  three  but  he  makes  the  fourth?"  "  If 
I   ascend    up   into   heaven,"  says   the   l*salmii>t  (cxxxix,  8/*.), 

9 


130  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

*'  thou  art  there  ;  if  I  make  my  bed  in  Sheol,  behold,  thou  art 
there.  If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning,  and  dwell  in  the 
uttermost  parts  of  the  sea ;  even  there  shall  thy  hand  lead  me, 
and  thy  right  hand  shall  hold  me." 

Negatively  taken,  the  predicate  of  Eternity  does  much  the 
same  thing  with  the  temporal  limitations  of  Divine  Being, 
which  the  predicate  of  omnipresence  does  with  the  spatial 
limitations.  And  yet  there  is  an  important  difference  between 
the  two.  God  is  eternal,  because  his  Being,  attributes,  and 
activities,  are  not  subject  to  the  limitations  of  time.  He  had 
no  beginning  in  time ;  nor  will  He  cease  to  be  in  time.  The 
conception  of  a  "  coming  to  be,"  a  development  in  time,  does 
not  apply  to  the  Infinite  and  Absolute,  as  it  certainly  does 
apply  to  the  entire  system  of  finite  things  and  finite  selves. 
"  Lacking  the  idea  of  eternal  duration,"  says  Frazer,^  "  primi- 
tive man  naturally  supposes  the  gods  to  be  mortal  like  him- 
self." But  so-called  "primitive  man,"  although  he  knows 
that  he  is  himself  mortal,  does  not  believe  that  death  ends  all 
with  him.  On  the  contrary,  he  has  little  doubt  that  he  shall 
survive  death,  as  he  believes  his  deified  ancestors  have  done. 
Nor  does  the  divine  soul  perish,  even  when  the  sacred  tree  or 
stone,  or  the  animal  body,  which  was  worshipped  because  of 
its  indwelling  there,  ceases  to  exist.  The  divine  ones  may  in- 
deed die ;  that  is,  they  may,  like  other  invisible  spiritual  ex- 
istences, be  driven  out  of  their  temporary  abodes.  But  they 
die  hard,  as  it  were ;  or  they  are  regarded,  as  they  rise  in  the 
scale  of  life  which  corresponds  to  the  improved  and  exalted 
conception  of  their  nature,  as  essentially  immortal.  And 
when  this  conception  attains  the  moral  dignity  and  the  philo- 
sophical consistency  of  a  Personal  Absolute,  the  eternity  of 
God  becomes  one  of  those  predicates  which  are  inevitably  in- 
corporate in  the  conception  itself.  To  make  Him  subject  to  the 
limitations  of  time  would  be  to  sacrifice  all  the  essential  char- 
acteristics of  his  infiniteness  and  absoluteness.     Therefore  the 

iThe  Golden  Bough,  II,  p  1. 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  PREDICATES  131 

mind  denies  that  these  limitations  are  applicable  to  its  idea 
of  God. 

The  denial,  however,  does  not  mean  that  the  self-conscious 
Life  of  God  is  to  be  described  as  an  "  eternal  now  "  ;  or  that 
the  time-concept  has  no  applicability  whatever  to  man's  neces- 
sary and  true  thought  about  the  nature  of  this  Life.  Let  it 
be  confessed  at  once  that  in  its  negative  aspect  this  phrase,  an 
"  eternal  now,"  covers  a  thoroughly  vain  and  foolish  attempt 
at  thinking  away  one  of  the  most  indispensable  and  absolutely 
immovable  conditions  of  all  thought.  To  conceive  of  God's 
Life  as  an  etemal-now  is  as  impossible  as  it  is  to  conceive  of 
God's  Being  as  essentially  unrelated  to  the  cosmic  processes 
and  to  human  history.  Indeed,  such  an  attempt,  if  it  could 
succeed,  would  result  in  the  destruction  at  once  of  all  the  es- 
sential characteristics  of  personality.  "  Wooden  iron  "  is  not 
a  more  intolerable  conception  than  "  eternal  now,"  in  the  nega- 
tive meaning  which  tlieology  and  philosophy  have  too  fre- 
quently attempted  to  attach  to  this  phrase. 

It  is  in  dealing  with  the  thought  of  the  divine  omniscience 
that  this  conception  of  the  divine  freedom  from  all  time- 
limitations  has  its  most  important  influence.  Taken  in  the 
negative  meaning  which  denies  any  application  of  the  time- 
concept  to  the  self-conscious  Life  of  God,  the  conception  of 
his  eternity  would  at  once  annihilate  the  conception  of  his  om- 
niscience. Knowledge,  whether  of  self  or  of  tilings,  is  incon- 
ceivable apart  from  their  time-form.  God's  consciousness  of 
the  world  could  be  true,  could  be  knowledge,  only  if  God  knew 
the  world  as  He  wills  it  actually  to  be, — namely,  a  develop- 
ment in  time.  But  what  is  meant — if  anything  even  absti-actly 
conceivable  is  meant — by  denying  that  the  divine  knowledge 
is  limited  by  time,  is  the  assertion  that  all  this  knowledge  is 
after  the  type,  in  its  perfection,  of  that  which  in  man's  case 
reaches  its  highest  pitcli  in  Self-knowledge  ;  and  this  is  imme- 
diate knowledge  of  wliat  is  the  liere-and-now  object  of  cogni- 
tive activity.     It  is  demonstrably  certain  that  it  takei  time  for 


132  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

us  to  come  to  self-consciousness,  or  to  achieve  a  so-called  sense- 
intuition  of  any  particular  thing.     But  with  God  it  is  not  so. 

In  its  positive  significance  the  predicate  of  eternity  expresses 
the  confidence  of  the  human  mind  in  two  truths  which  are  of 
great  importance,  both  for  its  own  theoretical  self-consistency 
and  also  for  the  assurance  of  religious  faith.  Whatever  God 
is  essentially,  that  He  is  in  an  original  and  unchanging  way. 
This  is  not  the  attribution  of  an  inconceivable  and  practically 
worthless  statical  nature  to  the  Divine  Being.  Science  and 
philosophy,  as  well  as  religion,  require  a  living  God.  Life  in- 
volves activity  ;  and  activity  involves  change.  But  the  succes- 
sive manifestations  and  phases,  if  we  may  so  speak,  of  this  liv- 
ing God  are  all  self-consistent,  self-regulated,  and  independent 
of  the  compulsions  and  limitations  which  affect  our  human  life 
in  time.  "  God  is  eternal,"  says  the  Koran,^  in  that  chapter 
which  is  declared  to  be  equal  in  value  to  a  third  part  of  it  all. 
He  is  "  the  everlasting  God ; "  He  is  God  "  from  everlasting 
to  everlasting ;  "  He  is  the  "  living  God,  and  an  everlast- 
ing king ;  "  "  the  King,  eternal,  immortal,  invisible  :  " — if, 
say  the  writers  of  the  Old  Testament,^  the  Personal  Absolute 
is  ever  omnipotent,  omniscient,  just,  wise,  holy,  etc. ;  then  he 
is  this,  and  is  all  that  he  essentially  is,  in  an  unchanging  and 
original  way. 

There  is,  however,  a  yet  profounder  significance,  in  a  posi- 
tive manner  and  from  the  point  of  view  of  an  ontological  phi- 
losophy, which  belongs  to  the  predicate  of  eternity  as  applied  to 
God.  The  ground  of  all  the  happenings  in  a  time-series  of 
that  woi'ld  of  things  and  selves,  of  which  the  race  has  expe- 
rience, and  which  science  aims  to  know  and  philosophy  to  ex- 
pound in  a  fundamental  way,  must  be  posited  in  the  Divine 
Being.  These  finite  beings  and  events  condition  and,  from 
man's  point  of  view,  produce  one  another  in  the  order  of  a 
time  that  applies  to  them  all — a  universal  category,  so  to  say, 

1  Sura  CXII. 

2  Gen.  xxi,  33;  Ps.  ciii,  17;  Jer.  x,  10;  1  Tim.  i,  17. 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  PREDICATES  133 

of  a  serial  order.  That  there  should  be  any  time-order  at  all, 
and  that  the  time-order  should  be  in  each  particular  just  what 
it  is,  as  well  as  that  this  order  should  be  apprehended  in  the 
same  way  by  different  minds,  and  as  a  matter  of  objective 
certainty  and  validity, — all  this  must  have  its  ultimate  expla- 
nation in  the  nature  of  the  World-Ground. 

Facts  of  universal  experience,  therefore,  compel  the  ques- 
tion ;  "  What  sort  of  a  Beino^  must  the  World  have  in  order 
that  it  may  satisfy  the  conditions  imposed  upon  it  by  this 
category  of  Time  ?  "  In  answer  to  such  a  question  it  would 
seem  that  no  better  conclusion  could  be  reached  than  that 
which  requires  statement  in  somewhat  like  the  following 
terms  :  ^  '*  The  world's  absolute  and  universal  time  is  the  actual 
succession  of  states  in  the  all-comprehending  Life  of  God.  If 
then  one  is  willing  to  substitute  for  the  mathematical  symbol 
of  X  the  conception  of  the  Life  of  an  Absolute  Self,  one  may 
validate  both  the  popular  and  the  scientific  assumption  of  an 
absolute  time  in  which  all  the  events  of  the  world  are  ever 
taking  place.  This  conception  is  that  of  a  series  which  must 
be  conceived  of  time-wise  and  yet  involves  the  denial  of  a  be- 
ginning or  end  to  itself ;  a  series  that,  from  every  '  now  ',  or  oo  i, 
reaches  both  backward  and  forward  to  go  h.  T7ie  transcenden- 
tal reality  of  time  U  the  all-comprehending  Life  of  an  Absolute 
Self." 

"  Our  time-consciousness  is,  indeed,  limited  ;  its  present  grasp, 
its  recall  of  memory,  and  its  anticipatory  seizures  of  the  future, 
arc  all  feeble  and  defective  enough.  But  really  to  1x3  in  time  is 
not  per  «e  to  be  finite  and  limited.  And  surely  the  conception 
symbolized  by  a  simple  oo  (the  eternal  now)  is  no  grander  or 
more  absolute  than  that  symbolized  hy  a  series,  c»  i,  oo  3,  oo ,, 
.  .  .  .  <X)  n.  Just  as  surely  is  all  liuman  tliought  about  Reality 
made  grander  and  more  worthy  to  stiind,  when  for  this  sym- 
l)ol,  00 ,  there  is  sulxstituted  the  conception  of  the   Life  of  an 

I  QuoUjcI  from  A  Theory  of  Reality,  p.  J 12/.,  in  which  Treatise,  chap.  VHl, 
the  whole  subject  is  di^usaed  in  detail. 


134  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Absolute  Self.  At  any  rate,  only  this  conception  seems  able 
to  validate  the  category  of  time  in  that  trans-subjective  and 
universal  application  of  it  which  the  development  of  human 
knowledge  presupposes,  demands,  and  perpetually  confirms." 

There  is  much  to  justify  the  contention  of  Professor  Royce^ 
that  the  Omniscience  of  God  constitutes  not  simply  a,  but  the 
most  fundamental  predicate  of  his  Divine  Being.  It  is  not 
possible,  indeed,  to  derive  the  other  predicates  from  this,  or  to 
resolve  them  all  into  it ;  nor  does  omniscience  alone  fully 
serve  the  purpose  of  even  a  "  preliminary  definition  "  of  God. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  science  and  of  naive  religious  ex- 
perience alike,  it  is  poiver  which  constitutes  the  central  factor 
in  man's  conception  of  Deity.  But  omniscience  is  so  related 
to  the  other  metaphysical  predicates,  on  the  one  hand,  and  to 
all  the  moral  attributes,  on  the  other,  that  it  seems,  in  some 
sort,  to  include  the  possibility  of  them  all  within  itself.  God 
could  not  be  omnipotent  if  he  did  not  know  all ;  nor  could  he 
be  perfectly  just  and  good,  without  perfection  of  knowledge, 
in  his  position  as  moral  ruler  of  the  w^orld. 

Like  all  the  other  metaphj^sical  predicates,  that  of  omniscience 
has  its  negative  as  well  as  its  positive  aspect.  It  involves, 
first  of  all,  a  denial  that  any  of  the  limitations,  which  apply  to 
finite  cognitive  processes,  apply  to  the  knowledge  of  the  Per- 
sonal Absolute.  In  making  and  interpreting  this  denial,  how- 
ever, we  are  to  beware  of  the  sophistry  which  finds  in  the  essen- 
tial nature  of  knowledge,  whether  as  cognitive  Self -consciousness 
or  as  Other-consciousness,  such  internal  and  irremovable  con- 
tradictions as  make  it  absurd  or  unmeaning  to  apply  this 
predicate  of  omniscience  to  God. 

The  historical  development  of  the  belief  that  God  is  om- 
niscient has  followed  essentially  the  same  lines  as  those  which 
mark  out  the  program  of  thought  concerning  all  the  other 
divine  predicates  and  attributes.  This  conception  also  has 
been  dependent  upon  essentially  the  same  conditions  of  ad- 

1  See  The  Conception  of  God,  pp.  7ff. 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  PREDICATES  135 

vancing  race-culture.  As  has  already  been  repeatedly  pointed 
out,  the  most  important  of  these  conditions  are  determined  by 
the  staofe  in  self-knowledcre  and  self-culture  at  which  the  race 
has  arrived.  What  it  is  to  be  a  Knower — a  person,  as  respects 
the  cognitive  activities  and  attainments  of  personal  existence — 
is  an  inquiry  which  can  be  answered  only  with  increasing  full- 
ness and  depth,  as  the  experience  of  self-conscious  beings  pro- 
vides the  answer  to  themselves.  As  far  back  in  history  as  the 
time  of  Esarhaddon,  the  priest  who  acted  as  mediator  for  this 
monarch  wlien  he  was  hard  pressed  by  a  group  of  nations  to 
the  Northeast  of  Assyria,  inquired  into  the  future  with 
the  prayer :  ^  "  Thy  great  divine  power  knows  it.  .  .  .  Is  it 
definitely  ordained  by  thy  great  and  divine  Will,  O  Shamash? 
Will  it  actually  come  to  pass?  "  The  Koran  has  reached  the 
conclusion  with  respect  to  Allah  :  ^  "  With  him  are  the  keys  of 
the  unseen.  None  knows  them  save  He  ;  He  knows  what  is 
in  the  land  and  in  the  sea ;  and  there  falls  not  a  leaf,  save 
that  He  knows  it ;  nor  a  grain  in  the  darkness  of  the  earth  ; 
nor  aught  that  is  dry,  save  that  this  is  in  his  perspicuous 
book." 

The  doctrine  of  the  divine  omniscience  denies  that  the 
limitations  of  space  and  time  apply  to  the  knowledge  of  God. 
Thus,  the  omniscience  becomes  interdependently  connected 
with  the  omnipotence  and  the  onmipresence  of  God.  Distance 
puts  no  ol^tacle  in  the  way  of  his  knowledge.  Being  equally 
present  and  powerful  everywhere,  he  is  also  cognizant  of  all 
events  and  causes,  as  man,  on  account  of  his  spatial  limitations, 
cannot  possibly  be.  Since  he  is  eternal,  the  time-limits  of 
hiiinan  cognitive  activities  are  not  applicable  to  him. 

Again,  limiUitions  of  content,  and  of  clearness  and  accnracy, 
to  which  all  finite  exi)erience  of  knowledge  is  subject,  do  not 
apply  to  the  a])solnt(i  and  infinite  knowledge  of  (lod.  The 
grasp  of  lininan  cognitive  consciousness,  whether  its  activities 

1  See  Ja^strow,  Religion  of  liubylouiu  and  Assyria,  p.  33-1. 

2  Sura.  XXXV 11. 


136  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

are  regarded  as  intuitive  or  ratiocinative,  perceptual  or  con- 
ceptual— and  whatever  form  of  so-called  knowledge  or  so-called 
faith  is  invoked — is  narrowly  circumscribed.  It  has  a  certain 
capacit}^  for  extending  its  range  ;  and  certain  men  have,  when 
they  are  compared  either  with  their  fellows  or  with  the  lower 
animals,  a  relatively  large  range  of  cognitive  experience. 
Aristotle  and  the  Bushman,  or  Aristotle  and  his  dog,  are  in- 
deed far  apart  in  their  intellectual  powers  and  accumulations. 
But  as  compared  with  the  knowable,  the  known  by  Aristotle 
is  as  a  drop  to  the  ocean,  a  corpuscle  to  the  universe.  So,  too, 
is  all  human  knowledge  infected  with  obscurities,  and  charged 
with  the  risk  of  errors.  All  man's  clearest  seeing  is  in  part ; 
all  his  surest  knowing  falls  short  of  the  infallible.  But  in  the 
self-conscious,  rational  Life  of  the  Personal  Absolute,  these 
limitations,  too,  are  thought  of  only  to  be  removed. 

In  attempting,  however,  to  form  a  positive  conception  of  the 
Divine  Omniscience,  certain  peculiar  and,  indeed,  irremovable 
difficulties  stand  in  the  way.  These  difficulties,  when  prop- 
erly understood  and  fairly  criticized,  do  not  indeed  avail  to  in- 
volve the  conception  in  hopeless  confusion  through  convicting 
it  of  inherent  contradiction ;  but  they  do  emphasize  its  in- 
comprehensibility in  respect  of  certain  of  its  most  essential 
factors. 

If  the  conception  of  omniscience  is  not  to  remain  purely 
negative,  and  so  of  little  use  for  the  attempt  to  establish  a 
rational  faith  in  the  object  of  religion,  all  its  more  positive 
factors  must  be  derived  from  our  most  highly  developed  ex- 
perience with  ourselves  as  self-conscious  beings.  It  is  only  in 
this  experience  that  human  knowledge  reaches  the  highest 
possible,  and  even  conceivable  type  of  immediateness,  cer- 
tainty, clearness,  and  fullness  of  content.  It  would  seem, 
therefore,  that  the  omniscience  of  God  must  be  conceived  of, 
if  positively  conceived  of  at  all,  as  infinite,  absolute,  and  per- 
fect Self-consciousness.  This  is  to  affirm  that  God's  knowl- 
edge  has  in  perfect  degree  those  qualities   of  absoluteness, 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  PREDICATES  137 

which  in  man's  case  reach  their  highest  form  in  the  develop- 
ment of  his  self-conscious  experience ;  and  that  this  knowl- 
edge extends  to  all  actual  and  conceivable  objects  of  knowledge. 
Such  a  conception  is  not,  indeed,  picturable  or  fully  compre- 
hensible by  the  human  mind.  But  it  may  be  elucidated  in  a 
way  by  the  following  considerations. 

Since  all  that  is  and  that  happens  depends,  without  limita- 
tions of  space  or  time,  upon  the  Infinite  and  Absolute  Will  of 
God;  and  since  nothing  can  arise,  or  exist,  or  occur,  in  inde- 
pendence of,  or  separation  from,  this  Will ;  there  is  a  profoundly 
significant  and  true  meaning  to  the  declaration  that,  with  God, 
all  knowledge  is  essentially  self-conscious.  All  beings  and  all 
happenings  are  in  Him ;  all  beings  and  all  happenings  are  known 
bi/  him  as  m  Him.  With  God  all  knowledge  is  self-conscious 
knowledge.  After  having  gained,  for  the  defense  of  a  rational 
faith  in  God  as  perfect  Etliical  Spirit,  the  position  that  the 
World-Ground  must  be  self-conscious  and  personal,  we  can- 
not relinquish  this  position  in  the  face  of  the  difficulties 
caused  by  the  attempt  to  comprehend  the  Divine  Omniscience. 
That  God  knows  what  he  wills,  and  feels,  and  thinks, — to 
speak  after  the  only  manner  which  can  give  positive  content 
to  the  conception  of  Him  as  Person, — is  now  no  longer  to  be 
denied.  (lod  knows  Himself — to  the  very  depths  of  his,  to  us, 
incomprehensible  being,  and  to  the  utmost  extent  of  his  infi- 
nite activities. 

But  the  Other-consciousness  of  God,  or  his  knowledge  of  the 
existences,  relations,  interactions,  and  changes,  of  the  universe 
of  finite  things  and  finite  selves,  is  embraced  in  the  infinite 
grasp  of  liis  self-consciousness.  The  world-consciousness  of 
G(jd,  too,  is  self-consciousness.  Indeed,  since  the  world  luus, 
without  ceiusing,  its  dependence  upon  God's  Will  ;  and  since 
its  indwelling  forces  are  forms  of  the  manifesUition  of  this 
Will ;  and  since  its  immanent  teleology — the  world-order — is 
the  expression  of  his  Mind;  God,  in  order  to  know  all  truly, 
as  things  and  souls  really  are,  and  as  events  actually  happen, 


138  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

must  know  them  all  as  being  and  happening  "  in  Him."  In 
whatever  sense  they  really  are  in  Him,  in  that  same  sense  they 
are  truly  known  as  in  Him. 

Objections  to  that  positive  conception  of  God's  omnis- 
cience which  identifies  it  with  his  infinite  and  absolute  self- 
consciousness,  apart  from  those  which  arise  from  a  false  concep- 
tion of  the  nature  of  a  Self,  are  chiefly  three  :  One  is  mainly 
ethical,  one  psychological,  and  the  third  is  more  definitely  meta- 
physical. These  objections  can  best  be  answered,  so  far  as  answer 
at  all  is  possible,  only  when  all  tlie  evidence  has  been  examined 
which  bears  upon  the  religious  doctrine  of  God  as  perfect 
Ethical  Spirit. 

None  of  our  ideas  of  value  are  disturbed,  and  none  of  the 
ethical,  sBsthetical,  or  religious  feelings  are  hindered  or  de- 
graded, by  regarding  Things  as  so  dependent  upon  God's  will 
that  his  knowledge  of  them  may  be  thought  of  by  us  as  a  spe- 
cies of  self-consciousness.  But  undoubtedly  the  case  of  other 
selves  is  by  no  means  precisely  the  same.  To  preserve  the  in- 
tegrity and  qua si-indei^endence  of  man's  selfhood  seems  to  the 
highest  forms  of  religious  experience  a  matter  of  the  utmost 
ethical  importance.  How  can  the  human  being  be  so  related 
to  the  Divine  Being  as  that  his  self-conscious,  cognitive  life  and 
development  shall  all  be  open  to  the  divine  self -consciousness, 
without  impairing,  or  even  destroying,  the  reality  of  his 
moral  and  religious  character?  In  reply  to  this  question  it 
maj^  be  said  that,  so  far  as  the  conception  of  omniscience  is 
concerned,  the  difficulty  is  scarcel}^  an  ethical  one  at  all.  Man 
certainly  can,  and  certainly  will,  have  just  so  much,  and  no 
more,  of  independent  and  self-conscious  existence  as  God  wills 
that  he  should  have.  Whether  this  shall  be  enough  to  con- 
stitute him  a  truly  moral  being,  and  to  make  it  possible  to  re- 
gard his  relations  to  God  as  truly  moral,  in  so  far  as  these  re- 
lations affect  the  independence  of  man's  will,  this,  too,  depends 
upon  the  same  Divine  Will.  If  God's  Will  is  "  Good  Will," 
— in  the  supremely  ethical  meaning  of  this  term, — and  if  this 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  PREDICATES  139 

Good-Will  wills  that  man  should  have  and  exercise  such  at- 
tributes, including  moral  freedom,  as  are  necessary  to  moral 
relations  between  the  two ;  then  God  may  know  man  as  a  true 
finite  Self  and  at  the  same  time  as  a  dependent  factor  in  his 
own  all-embracing  Self-consciousness.  In  a  word,  the  true 
ethical  problem  is  one  that  concerns  a  relation  of  wills. 

From  this  point  of  view,  therefore,  the  entire  objection  to 
making  God's  omniscience  identical  with  his  perfect  and  abso- 
lute self-consciousness  becomes,  the  rather,  a  psychological  dif- 
ficulty. The  inquiry  becomes  one  of  a  modus  operandi.  How 
can  the  Infinite  Self-consciousness  embrace  the  consciousness 
of  a  finite  self-conscious  being,  in  such  manner  that  both  con- 
sciousnesses shall,  from  their  respective  points  of  view,  corre- 
spond to  the  reality  ?  I  am  conscious  of  myself  as  thinking,  feel- 
ing, willing  thus  and  so.  In  spite  of  all  psychological  juggling 
with  this  complex  and  yet  fundamental  experience,  I  am  certain 
that  this  knowledge  is  of  a  Self,  that  is  mt/  Self  and  no  Other; 
and  that  it  is  immediate,  certain,  and  indubitably  true.  After 
the  pattern  of  this  experience  I  construct — feebly  to  be  sure,  and 
yet  as  best  I  may — the  ideal  of  an  Infinite  and  Absolute  Self- 
consciousness.  But  now  I  am  asked  to  believe  that  this  Other 
conscious  Being,  whom  my  self-consciousness  refuses  to  iden- 
tify with  me,  is  after  all  conscious  of  me  as  a  "moment,"  so 
to  say,  in  his  own  all-embracing  self-conscious  Life.  Thus  the 
psychological  o])jection  resolves  itself  into  a  metaphysical  puz- 
zle. Can  a  multitude,  a  social  community  of  finite  selves  exist 
and  develop  in  ontological  dependence  upon,  and  in  truly  moral 
relations  with,  an  Infinite  and  Absolute  Self?  The  more  de- 
tailed argument  in  defense  of  an  affirmative  answer  to  this 
question  requires  tlie  reflective  study  of  all  those  problems 
which  are  raised  by  the  religious  doctrine  of  "God  and  the 
World."  But  the  conclusion  of  the  argument  may  Ik?  antici- 
pated by  saying  that  just  tliis  ontological  relation  is  the  ground 
and  the  guaranty  of  all  truly  moral  relations.  Only  an 
Infinite  and  Absolute  Self,  embracing  in  his  omnipotence  and 


140  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RKLIGIOX 

omniscience  all  other  selves,  could  be  God  over,  and  God  in, 
all  beinsfs  existinof  in  the  one  World. 

If  it  were  necessary  to  leave  this  puzzle  as  it  is  stated  in  the 
most  harsh  and  uncompromising  way,  it  would  not  even  then 
amount  to  an  inherently  self-contradictory  conception  of  man's 
complex  experience  with  himself  and  with  other  selves.  For 
in  the  essentially  mysterious,  subtile,  and  tangled  web  of  this 
experience,  the  whole  of  it  may  be  regarded  from  several  points 
of  view.  The  individual's  self-consciousness  is  everywhere 
penetrated  with  factors  which  are  often  spoken  of  variously 
as  "  social  consciousness,"  or  ''  race  consciousness,"  etc.;  and  at 
its  base,  even  when  its  apex  is  in  the  highest  heavens  and 
clearest  sunlight,  there  is  always  a  vast  deal  that  requires  to  be 
classified  as  "instinctive,"  "  subliminal,"  or  under  other  similar 
obscure  terms. 

In  general,  it  is  psychologically  true  that  ^consciousness  and 
s^Tf-consciousness  are  by  no  means  mutually  exclusive  experi- 
ences ;  they  may  be  regarded  as  different  aspects  of  one  undi- 
vided experience.  Even  in  man's  limited  way  of  knowing, 
there  is  that  which  illustrates  this  possibility.  In  the  case  of 
any  two  most  intimate  and  familiar  friends,  for  example,  the 
cognitive  consciousness  of  each  tends  to  become  more  immedi- 
ately and  surely  representative  of  the  other ;  and  this  tendency, 
instead  of  limiting  or  destroying  the  self-consciousness  of  each, 
may  even  have  the  effect  of  enlarging  and  reenforcing  it. 
For  self-consciousness  is  not  an  abstract  awareness  of  the  Self 
as  out  of  all  relation  to  other  selves.  Without  other  con- 
sciousness, self-consciousness  cannot  develop.  In  man's  case 
this  other-consciousness  is  of  things  and  selves  that  exist  in- 
pendent  of  his  will,  and  that  are  therefore  known,  not  only  as 
related  to  the  Self,  but  as  somehow  essentially  not-self.  But 
as  we  have  already  said,  the  more  intimate  becomes  the  indi- 
vidual's knowledge  of  those  who  are  most  completely  of  his  own 
kind,  or  kinship,  the  more  does  his  self-consciousness  tend  to 
blend  perfectly  with  the  objective  consciousness  which  has  ref- 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  PREDICATES  141 

erence  to  other  self-consciousness.  I  know  my  fellow  in  know- 
ing myself;  because  of  the  perfection  which  my  knowledge  of 
him  has  attained.  At  one  and  the  same  time  this  state  of 
knowledge  is  self-consciousness,  and  also  consciousness  most 
perfectly  representative  of  another  Self.  In  a  word,  the  slow 
and  doubtful  process  of  interpreting  signs  from  the  outside,  as 
it  were,  is  being  replaced  by  an  intuitive  knowledge,  a  sympa- 
thetic consciousness,  or  co-consciousness. 

What  is  somewhat  dimly  adumbrated  in  certain  choicest 
human  experiences  may  well  enough  be  thought  to  be  perfectly 
realized  in  the  self-conscious  Life  of  the  Personal  Absolute. 
Is  there  consciousness,  or  self -consciousness,  anywhere  in  the 
wide  world  of  things  and  selves,  from  star  to  starfish,  from 
starfish  to  man,  and  from  the  most  degraded  savage  to  the 
most  comprehensive,  spiritual  individual  among  men  ?  In  this 
consciousness,  or  self-consciousness,  God  is  co-conscious.  From 
one  point  of  view,  every  state  of  the  finite  being,  if  it  has 
attained  the  sufficient  degree  of  development,  may  be  realized 
by  this  being  as  his  own  state  ;  but  from  another  point  of  view, 
every  such  state  is  also  to  be  regarded  as  known  by  the  Abso- 
lute Being  through  this.  His  universal  and  all-embracing  co- 
consciousness.  Here,  again,  the  mind  is  thrown  back  once 
more  upon  the  ethical  difficulty,  only  when  the  attempt  is 
made  to  adjust  the  relations  of  hunum  wills  and  the  Divine 
Will,  so  as  to  save  both  the  moral  freedom  of  the  former  and 
also  the  absoluteness  of  the  latter.  But  this  problem  is,  ulti- 
mately, not  the  concern  of  the  metiiphysical  predicate  of  om- 
niscience, but  the  care  of  the  moral  attributes  of  justice,  good- 
ness, and  ethical  love. 

The  conception  of  the  Divine  Omniscionce  lus  a  species  of 
cognitive  activity  which  is  at  one  and  the  same  time  '* Self- 
consciousness,"  and  '•  Other-consciousness,"  in  the  form  of  an 
all-eni bracing  co-cunsciousuess,  meets  with  its  supreme  psy- 
chological objection  when  it  is  ai)[)lied  to  God's  knowledge 
of  the  future.     What  has  been,  and   what  is,   may,   with  com- 


142  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

parative  self-consistency,  be  regarded  as  all  known  in  every 
"  moment "  of  that  omniscient  and  eternal  Life  which  has  been 
figuratively  represented  as  oo  i,  oo  2,  oo  »,  .  .  .  .  00  n.  But  how 
can  God  know  the  future  in  any  such  manner  as  to  warrant 
us  in  representing  this  knowledge  as  having  the  immediacy, 
certainty,  and  perfection  of  self -consciousness ;  and  if  Re 
knows  the  future  in  this  way,  liow  can  man  be  free,  and  how 
shall  be  preserved  the  ethical  interests  about  which  religion 
is  chiefly  concerned  ?  In  answer  to  all  such  inquiries,  the 
mind  is  compelled  to  resort  to  a  species  of  thinking  which 
suggests  a  real  truth  that,  however,  cannot  be  pictorially  repre- 
sented in  its  perfection  by  the  imagination  or  fully  compre- 
hended by  the  intellect. 

In  man's  case  we  hesitate  about  speaking  of  his  mental  atti- 
tude toward  the  future  as  one  of  knowledge  in  the  fullest  mean- 
ing of  that  word.  On  the  other  hand,  an  analysis  of  any  act 
of  cognition  shows  that  without  a  reference  to  the  future,  and 
indeed  to  the  *'  timeless  "  character  of  the  cognitive  judgment, 
no  knowledge  of  any  sort  can  take  place.^  Nor  is  this  future, 
or  timeless  character,  of  the  reference  to  reality  which  belongs 
to  every  cognitive  judgment,  an  affair  wholly  of  hesitating  and 
doubtful  calculation.  The  more  human  knowledge  grows,  the 
more  does  all  of  it  become  a  sort  of  insight  into  the  nature  of 
Reality,  which  makes  the  certainty  of  what  is  known  inde- 
pendent of  the  limitations  of  time.  To  say  this  is  in  no  way 
to  deny  the  growth  of  knowledge  ;  or  to  depreciate  the  develop- 
ment of  the  mental  activities  and  mental  achievements  of  the 
human  race.  But  the  very  principles  which  underlie  this 
growth,  and  the  fundamental  postulates  of  this  development, 
are  themselves  evidence  of  man's  undying  conviction  that  it  is 
possible  to  put  knowledge  on  a  basis  which  shall  not  leave  it, 
as  respects  the  future  even,  what  it  now  most  evidently  is, — 
namely,  a  species  of  more  or  less  probable  calculation  as  to  what 
is  more  or  less  likely  to  be  and  to  take  place. 

1  See  the  author's  Philosophy  of  Knowledge,  p.  263/. 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  PREDICATES  143 

We  are  not,  then,  to  regard  the  divine  omniscience  in  its 
reference  to  the  future  as  a  kind  of  calculation,  which  is  made 
accurate  only  by  the  extent  of  the  same  omniscience  with  ref- 
erence to  the  present  and  to  the  past.  God — to  speak  more 
humano — does  not  need  to  take  account  of  his  present  stock  of 
information,  and  to  figure  out  a  balance  sheet,  when  he  wishes 
to  know  how  the  business  of  his  world  is  coming  out.  We 
may,  indeed,  be  unable  pictorially  to  represent  or  fully  to  com- 
prehend the  modus  operandi  of  a  knowledge  of  the  future 
which  takes  the  shape  of  an  immediate,  certain,  and  perfect 
cognitive  attitude  in  the  self-conscious  Life  of  the  Personal 
Absolute.  But  the  possibility  of  such  knowledge  cannot  be 
denied  on  grounds  that  belong  to  the  inherent  nature  of 
knowledge.  On  the  contrary,  certain  human  experiences 
suggest  its  possibility.  In  the  highest  flights  of  the  finite 
mind,  in  the  intuitions  of  genius, — whether  they  occur  in 
prophecy,  science,  or  art, — something  approaching  this  seizure 
of  the  truth  of  Reality  which  escapes  the  limits  of  time,  becomes 
an  affair  of  actual  experience.  That  it  should  alwaj's  be  so 
with  God  we  are  leii,d  to  affirm,  both  in  the  interests  of  the 
self-consistency  of  our  conception  of  Him  as  the  omniscient 
One  ;  and  also  in  support  of  our  religious  feelings  as  they  are 
appealed  to  by  the  idea  of  an  all-sufficing  moral  government 
of  the  World.  And  here  again  the  difficulty  of  making  the 
predicate  of  omniscience  square  with  the  valid  ideal  of  moral 
government  becomes  the  problem  of  adjusting  the  relation  of 
finite  free-wills  to  the  AVill  of  the  Pei*sonal  Absolute. 

All  the  metaphysical  predicates  are  gathered  together  and  ex- 
pressed in  their  mutual  relations,  and  in  harmony,  by  the  con- 
ception of  the  Unity  of  God.  This  unity  is  the  unitary  being 
of  an  Absolute  Self.  At  this  most  comprehensive  idea  of 
Selfhood  the  race  has  l^een  slowly  arriving  through  many  cen- 
turies of  religious,  scientific,  and  philosophical  development. 
'*  He  is  God  Alone,"  says  the  Koran  :  "  Nor  is  there  like  unto 
him  any  one."     So  far,  however,  has  this  process  of  evolution 


144  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

no^Y  been  completed  that  the  negative  aspect  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  Divine  Unity  needs  comparatively  little  consideration. 
Negatively  taken,  this  predicate  denies  all  polytheistic  or  dual- 
istic  conceptions  of  God.  It  is  this  denial  which  a  philosophi- 
cal monotheism  puts  forth  as  the  confident  conclusion  of  its 
survey  and  interpretation  of  the  facts  of  the  religious  history 
of  mankind ;  it  is  the  goal  of  man's  speculative  endeavor  to 
give  a  rational  explanation  of  the  world  that  shall  harmonize 
the  conflicting  elements.  There  cannot  be  two  or  more  In- 
finite and  Absolute  Beings. 

But  positively  taken,  the  conception  of  God  as  the  Personal 
Absolute  is  the  conception  of  One,  the  Alone  God.  And  this 
involves  much  more  than  the  denial  of  a  plurality  of  divine 
beings  in  the  absolute  sense.  No  other  being  is  to  be  put  be- 
side Him  as  comparable  with  Him  in  respect  of  the  relations  it 
sustains  to  the  world  of  finite  things  and  finite  selves.  When, 
however,  the  inquiry  arises,  What  kind  of  unity,  or  oneness,  is 
that  which  characterizes  the  Divine  One?  there  is  no  other 
satisfying  or  even  intelligible  reply  than  this  :  God's  Unity  is 
the  Unity  of  a  Person ;  and  it  is  perfect  because  He  is  the  one 
Infinite  and  Absolute  Person.  All  those  abstract  and  imper- 
sonal conceptions  of  oneness,  which  some  philosophical  systems 
have  ascribed  to  the  Divine  Being  are  quite  as  powerless  and 
inappropriate  as  are  the  crade  notions  of  animism  or  of  polythe- 
ism. The  same  thing  must  be  said  of  those  trinities  of  divine 
beings  which  either  implicitly,  or  obviously,  deny  the  personal 
Unity  of  God.  They  all  show  their  instability  by  their  con- 
stant vacillation  between  a  doctrine  of  different  aspects,  or 
manifestations,  of  One  Divine  Being,  and  a  relapse  into  the 
tenets  of  a  virtually  polytheistic  theology.^ 

1  This  truth  is  curiously  illustrated  by  the  conceptions  and  practices  of  the 
Chinese.  In  the  Buddhist  temples  of  China,  the  common  people  suppose 
that  the  three  gigantic  images  of  the  "San  Pao"  ("Three  Precious  Ones") 
are  representations  of  three  different  divinities;  in  reality,  however,  accord- 
ing to  Legge  (The  Religions  of  China,  p.  166/.)  they  represent  (1)  "Intelli- 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  PREDICATES  U5 

All,  therefore,  that  this  predicate  of  Unity  guarantees  and 
expresses  can  only  be  conceived  of,  in  terms  of  the  Infinite  and 
Absolute  personal  Life.  But  it  is  such  life,  and  only  such 
life,  in  whose  native  activities  and  experiences  any  true  unity, 
whether  of  subject  or  object,  whether  of  Self  or  of  Things,  or 
of  the  one  World  of  many  selves  and  things,  can  possibly  be 
found.  To  expound  this  Unity  is  to  elaborate  the  doctrine  of 
the  Being  of  God  and  of  his  relations  to  the  Cosmos ;  to  com- 
prehend fully  this  Unity  would  be  to  know  the  Infinite  and 
the  Absolute  through  and  through ;  and  this  is  not  knowledge 
accessible  to  finite  minds.  But  to  know  about  this  Unity  in 
any  degree  is  to  lay  the  basis  in  knowledge  for  a  rational  faith 
in  the  Object  which  is  presented  to  man  for  his  supreme  ado- 
ration and  service  in  the  religious  experience  of  the  race.^ 

gence  personified  in  Buddha;  (2)  The  Law,  and  (3)  The  Church."  In  the 
Taoist  temples  of  the  same  land,  however,  the  San  Ch' ing  (or  "Three  Pure 
Ones")  are,  each  one,  called  Shang  Ti,  or  God.  They  are  (1)  Chaos  person- 
ified; (2)  the  "Most  High  Prince  Lao"  deified;  and  (3)  the  "God  of  mysteri- 
ous existence."  That  is,  they  are  not  trinities  in  any  proper  meaning  of  the 
word. 

1  Says  Sir  Isaac  Newton  in  the  celebrated  scholium  at  the  end  of  his  Prin- 
cipia:  "Deus  est  vox  relativa,  et  ad  servos  refertur;  et  deltas  est  dominatio  Dei, 
non  in  corpus  proprium,  uti  sentiunt  quibus  deus  est  anima  mundi,  sed  in  ser- 
vos. Deus  summuji  est  ens  cetemum,  infinitum,  absolute  perjectum;  sed  ens  ut- 
cunque  perfectum  sine  dominio  non  est  dominus  deus." 

10 


CHAPTER  XXXII 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 


It  is  well  yet  again  at  this  point  to  recall  the  goal  toward 
which  our  entire  course  of  reflection  has  been  leading.  The 
conclusion  which  has  already  been  reached  affirms  tliat  the  only 
real  Principle,  worthy  to  be  considered  as  a  World-Ground,  must 
be  found  in  the  unity  of  an  absolute  and  infinite  Personal  Life. 
This  conclusion  seems  to  involve  the  following  four  important 
philosophical  tenets :  (1)  All  beings  and  events  are  united,  in 
respect  of  their  real  relations  and  actual  history,  in  the  Will  of 
God;  (2)  All  physical  beings  and  events  are  immediately 
known  to  God,  are  "  moments  "  in  the  cognitive  consciousness 
of  God ;  (3)  Of  all  the  conscious  and  self-conscious  life  of 
finite  beings,  God  is  co-conscious  ;  for  his  omniscience  is  an 
essential  of  his  Unity  as  a  Person ;  and,  therefore,  (4),  the 
World,  or  Universe  of  things  and  selves,  with  all  their  inter- 
relations and  changes,  lies  "  mirrored  "  perfectly  in  the  unity 
of  the  rational  self-consciousness  of  God. 

But  the  ultimate  purpose  of  our  study,  lies  yet  beyond  all 
this.  It  is  to  test  the  reasonableness  of  a  faith  in  the  Object 
of  religious  experience,  as  this  Object  is  conceived  of  by  the 
highest  reflective  developments  of  that  experience.  In  other 
words,  it  is  to  establish,  if  possible,  a  rational  belief  in  the 
Being  of  a  God,  to  whom  may  be  attributed  in  perfection  the 
moral  attributes  of  justice,  goodness,  holiness,  and  ethical  love. 
Across  the  pathway  to  the  realization  of  this  purpose  lies  the 
problem  of  evil.  And  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  philosophi- 
cal conception  of  God  as  absolute  and  infinite  self-conscious 
146 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  147 

Person,  makes,  in  several  important  respects,  the  completed 
realization  of  this  purpose  increasingly  difficult.  This  state- 
ment will  become  more  obvious,  the  further  the  discussion  of 
the  problem  of  evil  proceeds. 

Another  important  feature,  if  it  be  not  a  defect,  in  the  argu- 
ment by  which  religion  supports  its  faith  in  God  as  perfect 
Ethical  Spirit,  is  its  plainly  "  circular  "  character.  No  satis- 
factory approach  to  a  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil  can  be 
made  without  giving  a  generous  confidence  to  the  evidential 
value  of  the  faith  of  the  highest  religious  developments,  that 
there  is  indeed  a  perfectly  just,  good,  holy,  and  loving  God. 
But  on  coming  to  examine  the  grounds  on  wliich  this  faith  it- 
self depends,  it  appears  that  tlie  evidential  value  of  the  faith 
is  not  wholly  or  chiefly  objective,  but  is  chiefly  subjective, — 
that  is,  consists  in  the  faith  itself.  Or,  to  state  the  case  of 
this  clrculus  in  arguendo  more  bluntly  :  When  we  ask.  How 
do  you  solve,  even  partially,  the  problem  of  evil?  the  answer 
of  religion  is  :  By  the  faith  in  a  perfectly  good  God.  And, 
then,  when  we  further  ask :  How  do  you  arrive  at  and  justify 
this  faith?  we  are  virtually  told  that  it  is  because  the  faith 
either  solves,  or  greatly  relieves,  the  problem  of  evil. 

It  may  as  well  be  confessed  at  once  that  the  relation  be- 
tween the  problem  of  evil  and  the  problems  offered  by  the  faith 
of  religion  in  the  moral  perfections  of  the  Absolute  Self,  whom 
this  faith  recognizes  and  worships  as  God,  is  a  relation  of  re- 
ciprocal dependence.  If  evil  is  actually  supreme,  or  even  on 
a  par  with  the  good,  then  no  man  can  reasonably  believe  in  a 
perfectly  good  God.  But  if  one  cannot  believe  in  a  perfectly 
good,  as  well  as  an  omnipotent  and  omniscient  God,  then  how 
sliall  one  believe  in  the  supremacy  and  final  triumph  of  the 
good?  All  this  shifting  of  the  argument's  point  of  view  shows 
that  religious  faith  in  tlie  Divine  Being  as  poi-fect  Etiiical  Spirit 
is  a  postulate  which  cannot  be  placed  on  independent  grounds 
80  as  to  afford  a  strictly  scientific  solution  of  the  problem  of 
evil.     It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  it  cannot  be  made  rea- 


148  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

sonable ; — chiefly  on  the  ground  that  it  most  perfectly  satisfies 
man's  ethical,  festhetical,  and  religious  sentiments,  and  most 
effectively  secures  the  ontological  value  of  his  ethical,  sestheti- 
cal,  and  religious  ideals. 

Does,  then,  the  problem  of  evil  admit  of  any  solution  ?  Cer- 
tainly not ;  if  by  its  solution  we  mean  to  indicate  the  possi- 
bility of  explaining  by  any  scientifically  established  law,  or 
general  truth,  the  actual  experience  of  the  race  with  the  really 
existing  amount  and  kinds  of  evil.  If,  however,  one  becomes 
willing  to  accept  at  their  full  evidential  value  the  sentiments 
and  ideals,  which  both  produce  and  justify  the  faith  of  religion, 
then  one  may  find  the  solution  which  this  faith  proposes,  the 
best  attainable,  not  to  say  the  perfectly  satisfactory,  answer 
to  this  dark  and  meaningful  problem.  Nor  will  evidence  in 
favor  of  this  solution,  which  lies  somewhat  outside  of  the  ex- 
perience of  religion,  be  wholly  wanting.  '•^  Solutions '\dc)  so- 
called,  which  go  beyond  this  modest  claim,  are  sure  to  be  un- 
tenable as  theories,  and  likely  to  prove  injurious  to  practical 
morality. 

As  to  the  fact  of  the  existence  of  evil,  in  vast  amount  and 
widely,  or  eyen  universally  distributed,  both  temporally  and 
territorially,  there  can  be  no  dispute.  From  the  point  of  view 
of  the  impartial  investigator,  as  well  as  from  the  religious 
point  of  view,  the  customary  distinction  may  be  maintained 
between  the  two  related,  but  by  no  means  identical,  forms  of 
evil.  This  problem,  then,  faces  the  facts  of  evil  as  either 
suffering,  or  else  as  moral  failure  ;  or — to  use  the  term  of  re- 
ligious experience — as  sin. 

If  inquiry  be  made  whether,  on  the  whole,  the  amount  of 
evil  as  suffering  exceeds  the  amount  of  good  as  happiness,  it 
seems,  on  examination,  to  prove  not  only  unanswerable,  but 
even  vain  and  idle.  The  estimate  for  which  it  calls,  must  al- 
ways be  made  from  the  point  of  view  of  some  individual's 
experience.  Thus  the  result,  since  suffering  is  essentially  sub- 
jective and  no  adequate  objective  and  universal  measure  of  its 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  149 

amount  can  be  obtained,  is  liable  to  both  exaggerations  and  ex 
cessive  minimizing,  in  dependence  upon  temperament,  mood, 
personal  experience,  and,  especially,  the  adopted  point  of  view. 
How  can  the  opinion  of  the  comfortable  well-fed  Englishman, 
who  is  perfectly  certain  that,  if  any  future  after  death  is  in 
store  for  him,  it  is  immediate  entrance  into  a  condition  of  beati- 
tude, or  the  judgment  of  the  successful  American  man  of  busi- 
ness, whose  highest  ideal  is  no  other  than  just  this  sort  of 
success,  agree  witli  the  opinion  and  judgment  of  the  ascetic 
Brahman  or  of  the  starving  millions  of  India?  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  two  opinions  do  not  agree.  Again,  with  the  Buddhist, 
existence  itself  seems  so  fraught  with  inescapable  evil  that  to 
get  out  of  it,  to  get  "  off  the  wheel,"  is  esteemed  the  supreme 
good.  And  to  attain  this  good,  the  way  is  not  through  the 
gratification  but,  the  rather,  through  the  extinction,  of  desire. 

Valid  considerations,  based  upon  facts,  may  be  opposed  to 
both  extreme  views  of  this  problem.  To  those  who  estimate 
the  evil  of  suffering  as  greatly  preponderating,  it  may  l^e  op- 
posed :  (1)  That  the  physiological  and  psychological  constitu- 
tion of  animal  life  is  such  as  to  set  limits,  both  of  time  and  of 
degree,  to  the  endurance  of  suffering ;  (2)  that,  on  tlie  contrar}-, 
there  is  everywhere  a  more  abundant  provision  for  the  ease- 
ment of  pain  and  for  the  promotion  of  a  variety  of  kinds  of 
pleasure  ;  (3)  that  the  animids,  the  lower  races,  and  the  chil- 
dren of  tlie  more  sensitive  races,  do  not  in  fact  suffer  at  all  as 
the  hype rgesthe tic  observer  imagines  that  they  do ;  or,  when 
reflecting  in  quiet  and  ease  upon  the  unutterable  woes  of 
total  humanity,  tlie  confirmed  aesthete  imagines  that  they  must. 
In  fact,  the  fearsome  burden  of  unrewarded  and  unappreci- 
ated t^)il  and  service,  of  egoistic  or  sympathetic  pains,  of  dLs- 
api)ointt*d  ambitions  and  hopes,  of  superstitious  or  well-founded 
fears,  does  not  prevent  the  life  of  tlie  multitudes  from  be- 
ing, on  the  wliole,  an  experience  of  prevailing  comfort  and 
large  and  somewhat  varied  happiness.  While  those  wlio  seem 
to  have    been  especially  selected   victims  of  an  unusual  and 


150  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

seemingly  intolerable  load  of  suffering,  most  often  manage  to 
secure  that  greater  measure  of  cheerful  endurance  and  trium- 
phant faith,  which  might  well  enough  make  them  the  objects 
of  env}^  by  ordinary  mortals. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  let  one  maintain  that,  after  all,  hu- 
man suffering  is  in  amount  relatively  insignificant  and  greatly 
exceeded  by  the  gross  sum  of  human  happiness  :  then  one 
stands  convicted,  either  of  an  insensitive  and  unsympathetic 
mind,  or  of  a  lack  of  varied  and  comprehensive  experience. 
For  (1)  that  very  physiological  and  psychological  constitution 
which,  as  it  were  of  necessity,  sets  limits  to  the  sufferings  of 
animal  and  human  life,  is  so  elastic  and  enduring  that  these 
same  limits  admit  of  a  quite  unbearable  amount  of  suffering 
as  judged  by  finite  capacity.  In  otiier  words,  most  men  have 
about  all  of  suffering  they  can  bear.  (2)  The  same  pro- 
vision of  a  nervous  system,  however  rudimentary  or  highly 
developed,  which  is  made  for  the  enjoyment  of  a  suitable  en- 
vironment, when  itself  in  healthy  condition,  is  just  as  certainly 
adapted  for  painful  reactions  whenever  the  environment  is 
unsuitable  or  the  apparatus  itself  is  out  of  tune.  And  (3)  there 
is  much  evidence  in  support  of  the  contention  of  Schopen- 
hauer ; — namely,  that  the  very  conditions  which  favor  the  ad- 
vancement of  the  race  in  what  is  called  civilization  are  essen- 
tially such  as  to  provide  for  a  large  increase  in  certain  forms 
of  suffering.  They  who  vibrate  most  rapidly  and  intensely  be- 
tween the  opposite  poles  of  painful  craving  and  painful  satiety 
and  ennui,  are  not  the  lower  animals,  or  the  lower  races,  or  the 
children  of  the  more  sensitive  races.  In  a  word,  the  develop- 
ment of  the  capacity  for  happiness  is  also,  in  even  greater  degree, 
a  development  of  the  capacity  for  suffering.  Moreover,  the  very 
motif  and  desired  end  of  religious  faith,  so  far  as  this  faith  takes 
account  of  this  two-sided  human  capacity^  is  to  furnish  satisfac- 
tions for  the  soul  in  such  manner  as  to  increase  the  one  and 
abate  the  other.  For  this  filial  attitude  toward  the  omnipo- 
tent, omniscient,  and  ethically  perfect  Will  of  God  (*'  sweet" 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  151 

and  "holy"  Will),  brings  the  finite  spirit  into  such  relations 
with  the  Infinite  Sufferer,  that  the  woes  of  mankind  are  more 
keenly  and  painfully  felt.  It  was  just  this  highest  refinement 
of  altruistic  suffering  which  made  that  Apostle,  who  was  al- 
ways ready  "  to  bo  offered,"  declare  :  "  The  whole  creation 
groaneth  and  travaileth  in  pain  together  until  now," — a 
figure  of  speech  taken  from  the  extreme  of  human  anguish. 
It  was  the  same  experience  which  wrung  a  bitter  ciy  from 
Jesus,  and  forced  the  temporary  obscuration  of  his  sense 
of  complete  union  with  God,  as  he  hung  upon  the  sacrificial 
cross. 

The  facts,  then,  furnish  sufficient  reason  for  that  vacillation 
of  mind  with  which  one  passes  from  observing  certain  kinds 
of  experience  to  the  observation  of  other  and  seemingly  con- 
tradictory kinds, — in  the  lower  animals  and  in  men, — as  inter- 
preted by  a  variety  of  so-called  laws,  physical,  physiological, 
psychological,  economical,  and  social.  Confusion  seems  to  be 
rife  in  the  phenomena.  The  sympathetic  soul  is  torn  asunder 
by  the  evidences  of  this  cosmic  strife. 

The  difficulty  of  estimating  amounts  of  happiness  and  suffer- 
ing, of  making  up  a  satisfactory  balance  sheet,  and  of  debiting 
and  crediting  the  appropriate  sums  to  the  different  kindly  or 
malignant  forces  of  nature,  is  made  more  profound,  if  not  more 
unanswerable,  by  the  discoveries  of  modern  science.  Biology 
reveals  the  astonishing  fact  that  innumerable  destructive  liv- 
ing forms — bacteria,  bacilli,  and  germs  of  various  kinds — have 
been  provided  for  all  sentient,  and  especially  for  human  life  ; 
these  instruments  of  torture  and  death  have  made  for  man  an 
inescapable  environment  of  incredible  suffering.  The  constitu- 
tion of  the  world  in  whicli  man  lives  has  monstrous  pain  firmly 
embedded  in  its  very  texture.  What  biological  science  lias 
demonstrated  in  its  most  convincing  way,  tlie  antliropological, 
economical,  and  social  sciences  have  also  adopted  as  a  theoreti- 
cal tenet.  The  evolution  of  animal  life,  the  progress  of  the 
race  in  every  form  and  degree  of  race-culture,  is  purchasable, 


152  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

only  by  the  payment  of  enormous  sums  of  suffering.  The  his- 
tory of  art  confirms  the  testimony  of  the  sciences.  The  poets 
"  learn  by  suffering  what  they  teach  in  song."  The  greatest 
painters,  sculptors,  and  musicians  proclaim  the  same  truth. 
The  highest  art  culminates  in  tragedies,  in  passion  music,  in 
the  graphic  or  plastic  delineation  of  suffering  heroes.  That 
this  must  he,  all  modern  science  is  agreed  in  proclaiming. 

More  slowly,  and  as  yet  not  quite  so  surely,  has  this  same 
science  been  making  clear  that  similar  instrumentalities  for  an 
increased  amount,  and  higher  kind,  of  happiness  are  embedded 
in  the  same  constitution  of  the  world.  Biology  is  talking  of 
the  beneficent,  as  well  as  of  the  maleficent,  bacteria  and  other 
forms  of  lower  life,  very  much  as  "  unreflecting  spiritism " 
was  wont  to  talk  of  good  and  bad  spirits,  of  kindly  and  hate- 
ful gods.  So  do  the  other  sciences  of  human  life  try  to  dis- 
cover how  the  evils  of  iniquitous  government,  the  inequalities 
of  social  life,  the  horrid  barbarities  of  war,  and  the  monstrous 
suffering  inflicted  by  the  severer  "  acts  of  God,"  by  earth- 
quake, volcanic  eruptions,  pestilences,  etc.,  somehow  "  work 
together "  for  the  greater  good.  And  with  these  sciences, 
"  greater  good  "  means  more  of  human  happiness. 

When,  again,  the  mind  tries  to  estimate  the  fact  of  moral 
evil,  and  to  do  sums  in  its  measurement  with  precision  some- 
what approaching  the  mathematical,  its  failure  is  even  more 
complete.  It  is  no  mere  liking  for  a  defunct  Augustinian 
theology,  in  its  excess  of  judgment  over  the  Pauline  type, 
which  compels  the  moral  consciousness,  when  viewing  certain 
classes  of  facts,  to  feel :  "  There  is  none  that  doeth  good,  no, 
not  one  ;"  "  They  are  all  gone  out  of  the  way,  they  are  together 
become  unprofitable."  But,  given  more  of  insight  and  of 
human  sympathy,  there  are  other  classes  of  facts  which  show 
how  much  native  capacity  for  certain  virtues,  and  for  a  re- 
sponse to  any  appeal  made  in  the  name  of  the  higher  moral 
and  religious  ideals,  characterizes  human  nature  in  general. 
Thus  the  arguments  for  "  total  depravity,"  in  the  theological 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  153 

meaning  of  this  term,  serve  very  largely  to  cancel  those  for  the 
native  goodness  of  humanity.  Taken  together,  they  leave  our 
judgment  as  to  the  relative  amounts  of  moral  evil  and  moral 
goodness  in  the  same  uncertain  state.  The  conclusion  seems 
inevitable  ;  the  problem  as  to  the  preponderance  of  good  and 
evil,  in  fact,  is  unanswerable  by  any  species  of  calculation. 
Whether  there  is  more  of  happiness,  and  of  essential  moral 
goodness,  in  the  human  race  now  than  was  four  thousand 
years  ago  is  no  easy  sum  in  aritlimetic  or  algebra :  it  is  much 
too  big  and  abstruse  a  problem  to  be  solved  by  collections  of 
economical  and  social  statistics. 

When  the  different  abstract  solutions  of  the  problem  of  evil, 
which  leave  largely  out  of  account  the  religious  experience  of 
humanity  as  enforced  by  the  doctrine  of  development,  are  ex- 
amined, they  are  all  found  to  be  very  far  from  satisfactory. 
Especially  true  is  this  of  any  theory  which  denies  the  reality  of 
evil — whether  of  suffering  or  of  sin.  Such  theories  are  accus- 
tomed to  start  out  with  the  sonorous  declaration  that  evil,  both 
suffering  and  sinning,  is  only  relative  and  negative.  To  this 
one  might  oppose  the  equally  untenable  declaration  of  Schopen- 
hauer that  pain  is  the  only  positive  thing,  and  that  pleasure  or 
happiness  is  only  negative.  Man's  experience  with  suffering 
and  with  moral  obliquity  is,  like  all  his  experience,  a  relative 
and,  in  some  sort,  a  negative  affair.  Both  pain  and  pleasure 
imply  relations  ;  tliey  depend  upon  reactions  that  are  relative 
to  the  condition  of  the  subject  in  his  objective  environment. 
In  this  meaning  of  the  words,  it  is  not  true  that  "  Mind  can,  in 
itself  and  of  its  own  place,  make  a  heaven  of  hell,  a  hell  of 
heaven."  Pain  negates  pleiisure  ;  suffering  negates  happiness  ; 
moral  badness  negates  moral  goodness;  and  sin  negates  holi- 
ness. Even  these  unproductive  and  figurative  uses  of  the  terms 
"  relative  "  and  ''  negative"  are  subject  to  the  undoubted  fact 
of  human  experienre  that,  for  the  individual  and  for  the  nice, 
life  is  always  a  strange  and  confusing  and  largely  inexplirable 
mixture  of  good  and  evil,  of  suffering  and  happiness,  of  wrong- 


154  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

doing  and  right-doing,  in  the  same  individual,  the  same  com- 
munity, the  same  social  status  ;  and  even  in  the  same  conscious 
state. 

To  actual  human  experience,  and  to  the  reflective  thinking 
which  deals  seriously  with  this  experience,  all  solutions  of  the 
problem  of  evil  which  deny  the  reality  of  evil  must  always  seem 
no  better  than  juggling  with  words.  With  the  religious  point 
of  view  such  optimism,  and  its  opposite  of  pessimism,  are  alike 
untenable.  The  conclusion  of  religion  is  substantially  ex- 
pressed in  Voltaire's  poem,  Le  Desastre  de  Lishonne  : — 

"  All  will  one  day  he  welU  we  fondly  hope; 
That  all  is  well  to-day,  is  but  the  dream 
Of  erring  men,  however  wise  they  seem, 
And  God  alone  is  right." 

Much  more  helpful  is  that  attempt  at  the  solution  of  the 
problem  of  evil  which  regards  both  suffering  and  moral  failure, 
or  sin,  as  instrumental,  as  means,  and  even  as  necessary  means, 
to  a  higher  good  of  happiness  and  of  moral  purity.  This  view 
undoubtedly  seems  to  relieve  the  problem  of  some  of  its  more 
difficult  and  dark  features ;  but  it  does  not  afford  a  completel}^ 
satisfactory  solution,  especially  of  the  problem  of  moral  evil. 
Indeed,  unless  the  postulates  of  religious  experience,  and  the 
anticipations  of  a  theory  of  evolution  which  shall  give  the 
fullest  expression  to  the  value  of  the  religious  ideals,  are  both 
taken  into  our  confidence,  the  "  instrumental  theory  "  of  evil 
fails  of  offering  even  a  partial  solution  of  its  problem. 

That  pain  is  a  necessary  means  to  the  development,  and 
even  to  the  existence,  of  all  finite,  spiritual,  and  self-conscious 
life  has  been  held  by  various  writers.  "  Without  it,"  says  Sa- 
batier,^  *'  it  does  not  seem  that  the  life  of  the  spirit  could  arise 
from  the  physical  life."  Indeed,  there  is  reason  for  declaring 
that,  with  man  in  his  present  environment,  the  consciousness 
of  self  and  the  separation  of  the  soul  from  the  organism,  as  a 

1  Esquisse  d'une  Philosophic  de  la  Religion,  p.  l.'^ 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  155 

self-cognitive  reality  with  interests  and  ideals  that  somehow 
transcend  the  organism,  could  not  take  place  without  pain. 
Thus  the  thought  is  led  on  to  estimate  highly  the  value  of 
suffering  of  various  sorts  as  disciplinar}%  and  as  means  to  the 
arousing  and  cultivation  of  the  higher  powers  of  man's  spiritual 
life.  Such  a  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil  seems  to  agree,  of 
necessity,  with  religion  in  rejecting  a  purely  eudsemonistic 
ethics.  It  affirms  the  value  of  happiness,  either  positive  or  as 
freedom  from  suffering,  to  consist  largely  in  its  instrumental 
relations  to  the  realization  of  a  higher  form  of  Good.  Pain  is 
means  to  an  end  that  is  higher  than  happiness.  Thus  this 
theory  reverses  the  position  of  all  utilitarian  systems  of  ethics  ; 
only  thus  does  it  prepare  the  ground  for  considerations  which 
help  to  establish  a  theodicy  from  the  religious  point  of  view. 
"  It  is  difficulties,"  says  an  ancient  writer,  '*  which  show  what 
men  really  are.  Therefore  when  a  difficulty  falls  upon  you 
remember  that  God,  like  a  trainer  of  wrestlers,  has  matched 
you  with  a  rough  young  man.  For  what  purpose  ?  you  may 
say.  Why  that  you  may  become  an  Olympic  conqueror ;  but 
it  is  not  accomplished  without  sweat." 

We  have  already  seen  how  the  theory  of  evolution,  as  ap- 
plied to  every  form  of  life  and  of  human  progress,  emphasizes 
the  instrumental  value  of  arrangements  which  are  inevitably 
connected  witli  an  overwhelming  amount  of  suffering  and  of 
death.  Science,  the  philosophy  of  art,  and  the  philosophy  of 
religion,  are  all  coming  to  agree  as  never  before,  in  realizing 
the  immense  and  seemingly  indispensable  utility  of  struggle 
and  pain  ;  and  also  the  ontological  value  of  ideals,  the  effort 
to  reach,  and  even  to  approach,  which  has  caused  the  race  so 
much  of  struggle  and  pain. 

The  instrumentiil  worth  of  moral  evil,  or  sin,  is  a  much  more 
difficult  thesis  to  nuiintain.  ^fan  learns,  indeed,  by  trials  ;  in 
trials,  mistiikes  are  inevitable  ;  and  wliere  conduct,  or  action 
that  has  moral  concernment,  is  the  stake,  undoubtedly  the 
facts  justify  the  contention  that  much  conduct  which  is  moral 


156  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

failure,  or  sin,  is  the  inevitable  concomitant  of  progress  in 
the  realization  of  moral  values.^  It  may,  of  course,  also  be 
said,  that  the  very  moral  freedom — whatever  "  moral  freedom  " 
may  mean,  and  however  much  or  little  of  it  man  can  attain — 
which  makes  possible  moral  goodness  and  the  progressive  ap- 
proaches to  rising  moral  ideals,  makes  also  possible  moral  evil 
and  the  supreme  and  final  failure  to  attain  these  ideals.  In 
view  of  the  subjective  limitations  of  man's  constitution  and 
the  nature  of  his  physical  and  social  environment,  speculative 
ethics  seem  compelled  to  maintain  that  much  moral  evil  is  in- 
evitable. When  the  conditions  of  man's  ethical  progress  are 
viewed  from  the  developmental  point  of  view,  moral  failure 
and  obliquity,  and  even  moral  disease  and  death,  in  overwhel- 
ming numbers  of  the  human  race  appear  to  have  served  as  means 
to  the  spiritual  uplift  of  humanity.  The  essential  value  of 
struggle  with  temptation,  and  of  experience  with  the  results  of 
yielding  to  temptation,  may  also  be  estimated  in  a  way  greatly 
to  reinforce  the  claim  that  much  sinning  is  an  indispensable 
prerequisite  to  some  holiness. 

Even  to  admit  all  this,  however,  leaves  the  mind  far  indeed 
from  a  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil.  In  fact,  there  would 
seem  to  be  much  truth  in  Eucken's  contention^  that  the 
"  medicinal  "  theory  makes  the  whole  subject  yet  more  of  an 
insoluble  riddle.  This  it  does  most  effectually  for  minds  that 
will  not  accept  the  postulates  of  the  supremest  religious  ex- 
perience of  the  race.  For  these  are  the  postulates  that  guar- 
antee   the   hope    of   Redemption. 

The  instrumental  theory,  with  its  proposed  solution  of  the 
problem  of  evil,  does  not  bear  altogether  well  being  submitted 

1  This  thought  is  beautifully  expressed  in  the  following  stanza  from  a  Ger- 
man poem: — 

"Wer  nie  sein  Brod  mil  Thrdnen  ass, 
Wer  nie  die  kummervolle  Nachte, 
A  71  f  seinem  Bette  weinend  sass, 
Der  kennt  Eiich  nicht,  Ihr  himmlischen  Mdchte." 

2  Wahrheitsgehalt    der   Pveligion,    p.    388/. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  157 

to  the  testing  of  the  facts  of  experience.  These  facts  support 
its  critics  in  making  the  following  objections  :  (1)  Much  pain 
does  not  appear  to  serve  the  ministrations  of  a  higher  good, 
whether  of  happiness  or  of  moral  purity.  Indeed,  in  the  ac- 
tual experience  of  the  multitude  of  the  race,  it  is  just  this  in- 
evitable and  overwhelming  amount  of  suffering  which  prevents 
the  higher  and  more  valuable  forms  of  intellectual,  social,  ar- 
tistic, and  even  of  ethical  and  religious  satisfaction.  That  it  is 
suffering,  either  through  bodily  pains,  unsatisfied  cravings,  or 
satiety  and  ennui,  which  leads  to  much,  Nay  !  to  most,  of  the 
prevalent  moral  evils,  there  is  little  reasonable  doubt.  But 
(2)  the  way  that  suffering  is  distributed  constitutes,  perhaps, 
the  darkest  part  of  the  problem  of  evil.  It  cannot  be  said  with 
any  confidence  that  most  of  such  evil  comes,  either  to  those  who 
most  deserve  it,  or  to  those  who  can  best  endure  and  profit  by 
it.  (3)  Without  accepting  the  postulate  of  a  continued  and 
improved  existence  for  the  race  after  death,  much  of  the  co- 
gency of  the  argument  which  justifies  suffering  as  instrumen- 
tally  necessary  for  human  development  is  lost ;  but  this  postu- 
late itself  depends  upon  the  acceptance  of  the  religious 
conception  of  the  Divine  Being  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit. 

When  the  attempt  is  made  to  apply  the  instrumental  theory 
to  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  moral  evil,  the  mind  is  met 
by  yet  more  serious  objections.  All  three  of  the  objections 
just  recited  recur  with  added  emphasis.  At  this  point,  too, 
appears  the  gravest  danger  of  undermining  the  very  founda- 
tions of  ethics;  and  so  of  invalidating  the  higher  forms  of  re- 
ligious life  and  development.  These  attain  their  supreme 
worth,  only  if  they  are  regarded  lus  ways  of  freeing  the  Self 
from  the  thralldoin  of  moral  evil,  of  triumphing  completely 
over  it,  rather  than  chiefly  of  making  use  of  it  as  means  to  a 
liigher  moral  good.  And  when  the  instrument'il  theory  of 
moral  evil  is  affiliaU'd  with  the  deterministic  doctrine  of  the 
will  and  witli  a  (juani-,  if  not  quite  coni[)letely  mechanical  view 
of  the  development  of  the  race,  its  logical  outcome  is  antithetic 


158  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

to  the  interests  of  religion  ;  it  is  even  al)horrent  to  Christian 
experience. 

The  mind  of  man,  when  reflecting  most  intelligently  and  se- 
riously upon  the  problem  of  evil,  whether  as  suffering  or  as 
sin,  naturally  and  inevitably  turns  to  religion  for  a  solution. 
Thus  the  problem  of  evil  becomes  a  theodicy.  The  more  the 
so-called  "  goods  "  of  human  living  increase,  and  the  more 
what  is  called  (oftentimes  with  hypocrisy,  often  with  cynicism, 
oftenest  with  flippancy)  "  modern  civilization  "  advances,  the 
more  does  the  consciousness  of  evil  deepen  and  greaten  in 
thoughtful  minds.  Thus  the  demand  for  relief  from  life's  bur- 
dens, theoretical  and  practical,  gains  in  insistency  and  empha- 
sis. For  the  ideal  good,  which  the  higher  religions  j)romise  and 
expect,  the  need  of  humanity  increases  rather  than  diminishes 
with  advancing  race-culture.  "  It  is  the  yearning  cry,"  says 
Wellhausen,  remarking  on  the  dark  side  of  the  modern  world, 
"  that  goes  through  all  the  peoples ;  as  they  advance  to  civil- 
ization, they  feel  the  value  of  the  goods  they  have  sacrificed 
for  it." 

In  treating  the  Problem  of  Evil  as  a  Theodicy  the  following 
three  considerations  require  to  be  kept  constantly  in  view. 
And,  first,  monotheistic  religion  is  compelled  to  find  the  ulti- 
mate origin  of  the  facts  which  constitute  the  problem,  in  the 
Will  of  God.  AVhence  comes  the  evil  of  the  World  ?  For  re- 
ligion this  pressing  question  cannot  be  confused  by  logical  ab- 
stractions or  metaphysical  evasion.  Evil  is  not  a  bulk  of  being, 
a  lump  sum  of  existence,  or  an  impersonal  entity.  It  is  nothing 
else  than  the  actual  misery  and  degradation  of  sentient  and, 
especially,  of  human  life.  So  far,  then,  as  its  problem  can  be 
made  an  object  of  investigation,  the  origin  of  evil  must  be  found 
in  the  nature  of  sentient  and  self-conscious  life  as  necessarily 
related,  in  its  being  and  in  its  development,  to  its  environment. 
And  it  is  just  this  necessity,  w^hich  the  medicinal  or  instru- 
mental theory  emphasizes,  in  the  thought  thus  to  help  out  the 
solution  of  the  problem,  that  makes  the  theistic  answer  all  the 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  159 

more  difficult.  The  pantheistic  and  pessimistic  theories  of 
Schopenhauer  and  of  Hartmann  allow  of  making  the  irration- 
ality of  blind  Will,  or  the  unconscious  striving  of  an  immanently 
teleological,  but  impersonal  Will,  responsible  for  this  necessity. 
But  monotheistic  religion,  and  especially  Christianity,  regards 
God  as  the  Creator,  Preserver,  and  Moral  Ruler  of  the  Universe  ; 
the  existence  of  evil,  with  all  its  enormous  amount  and  seem- 
ingly inevitable  character  must  have  its  ground,  therefore,  in 
his  Will.  This  "  ultimate  responsibility  "  of  God  constitutes 
the  fundamental  problem  of  every  theodicy. 

In  God  also  must  the  solution  be  found,  if  found  at  all. 
Plato  saw  this  truth ;  and  his  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil, 
in  the  Republic  (book  x),  is  in  all  essential  respects  a  theistic 
and  Christian  theodicy.  The  Stoics  added  the  conception  of 
a  more  perfect  necessity,  which  so  binds  together  the  evil  and 
the  good  that  the  former  cannot  be  removed  without  destroying 
also  tlie  possibility  of  the  latter.  And  Christian  theologians  ^ 
have  quite  generally  held,  that  the  fundamental  and  chief,  if 
not  the  sole,  principle  of  a  theodicy  is  faith  in  the  supremacy 
of  God  as  "  Absolute  Reason,"  which  may  be  identified  with  a 
"  scientifically  ordered  system."  The  conception  which  the 
philosophy  of  religion  vindicates — namely,  that  of  God  as  In- 
finite and  Absolute  self-conscious  Person — leaves  no  escape 
from  the  conclusion  that  the  only  possible  theory  of  the  origin 
of  evil  is  some  form  of  a  theodicy. 

In  the  second  place,  the  possibility  of  a  theodicy  rests  upon 
and  embraces  the  postulate,  or  the  proved  trutli,  that  the  world 
is  a  moral  system.  Here  the  thought  of  ^Vlartineau  is  most 
pertinent.  "  We  seek,"  says  lie,^  *'  to  know  whether  the  system 
to  which  we  belong  corresponds  to  the  righteousness  ascribed 
to  its  author.  Well,  then,  by  liypothesis  it  is  to  be  a  moral 
system,  and   must  comprise  the  requisites  for  the  formation, 

*  See,  for  example,  S.  Harri.s,  God,  the  Creator  and   Lord   of  /Ul,  I,  p. 
210/. 
3  A  Study  of  Religion,  II,  p.  54. 


160  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  exercise,  and  the  discipline  of  character.''''  This  assumption 
underlies  all  human  attempts  to  judge  God  by  his  doings;  thus 
it  leads  to  the  strange  antithetic  attitudes  of  such  writers  as 
John  Stuart  jNIill,  on  the  one  hand,  and  Dean  Mansel  on  the 
other.  For  piety  agrees  with  the  testimony  of  science  and  of 
experience,  when  they  furnish  evidence  of  the  justice  and  good- 
ness of  God  ;  but  piety  has  always  espoused  the  cause  of  God 
against  the  evidence,  on  the  ground  that  God  is  too  high,  and 
his  ways  too  mysterious,  for  human  judgment.  Meantime  all 
the  arguments  pro  and  con^  and  the  very  effort  to  erect  or  to 
destroy  a  tenable  theodicy,  agree  upon  the  postulate  that  the 
Universe  is  a  subject  for  moral  judgments.  Indeed,  were 
this  not  so:  How  could  the  Universe  give  evidence  either  for, 
or  against,  the  justice  and  goodness  of  God  ? 

And,  third,  the  problem  of  a  theodicy  cannot  be  satisfactorily 
discussed  at  all  without  the  constant,  intelligent,  and  well- 
informed  effort  to  consider  the  subject  in  its  totality.  But 
herein  is  the  vastness  of  it ;  here  extends  the  valid  ground  for 
the  plea  that  much  must  be  left,  and  even  no  little  positive 
force  given,  to  the  "  argument  from  ignorance."  In  viewing 
the  problem  of  evil — and  especially  when  this  problem  is  viewed 
as  a  theodicy — the  World  must  be  taken  as  a  whole ;  it  must 
be  considered  as  that  kind  of  a  connected  and  interdependent 
totality  which  it  is  on  good  grounds  assumed,  but  only  very 
partially  and  imperfectly  known,  to  be.  Its  totality  embraces 
the  boundless  stretches  of  the  "World's  time,  not  only  back- 
ward but  into  its  prospective  future.  The  problem  of  evil  is, 
therefore,  not  the  problem  of  any  individual  existence,  or 
particular  set  of  relations  ;  it  does  not  concern  simply  some 
group  of  individual  human  beings,  whether  particularly  favored 
or  especially  unlucky.  It  is,  the  rather,  tlie  problem  of  the 
universe's  construction  and  history ;  it  is  the  problem  of  the 
race.  It  is  not  the  problem  of  an  hour,  or  of  a  day,  or  even  of 
a  single  century ;  it  is,  the  rather,  the  problem  of  all  the 
countless  centuries.     It  can  be  solved,  if  solved  at  all,  only  by 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  161 

the  realization  of  an  ultimate  purpose, — a  purpose  which  deter- 
mines the  evolution  of  the  race,  regarded  as  a  divinely  ordered 
and  divinely  conducted  process. 

When,  then,  certain  individual  experiences  or  particular  sets 
of  facts  seem  to  oppose  those  postulates  of  religious  faith  which 
sustain  the  conviction  that  God  is  perfectly  wise  and  good,  the 
so-called  "  argument  from  ignorance,"  illogical  and  unscientific 
as  such  an  argument  often  is,  seems  by  no  means  necessarily  oufc 
of  place.  Indeed,  without  a  similar  use  of  the  argument,  there 
are  few  of  the  conceptions  and  laws  of  the  pliysico-chemical 
sciences  which  can  establish  themselves.  These  conceptions 
are  uniformly  based  upon  partial  evidence ;  they  make  an  ap- 
peal for  patient  waiting  for  further  evidence,  in  order  to  accom- 
plish the  removal  of  antithetic  conclusions,  and  so  to  bring  about 
a  perfect  internal  harmony.  These  so-called  "  laws,"  too,  are 
customarily  honeycombed  with  holes  or  flaw-like  specks,  which 
indicate  the  gnawing  corrosion  of  exceptions^  or  the  vanishing 
mould  of  discarded /(2Z?aczVs.  Above  all  is  the  argument  with 
which  modern  science  supports  its  conception  of  the  vast  com- 
plex of  obscurely  related  beings,  and  of  unexplained  and  inex- 
plicable transactions,  as  an  orderly  Whole,  a  true  Cosmos, 
obliged  to  make  constant  and  extensive  appeal  to  human  igno- 
rance. Many  things  in  this  vast  complex  do  indeed  indicate 
that  it  has  the  nature  of  an  Orderly  Whole ;  but  many  other 
things  look  as  though  "  chaos  and  old  night,"  instead  of  the 
"reign  of  law,"  were  in  supreme  control.  It  is  largely  because 
rejuson,  and  more  especially  moral  reason,  will  not  contentedly 
tolerate  the  idea  of  "Chaos,"  but  insists  on  the  supremacy  of 
its  ideals,  that  the  conclusion  of  a  univei*sal  Cosmic  Order 
wins  the  human  mind.  Science  always  espouses  the  cause  of 
Order  even  against  the  evidence ; — and  it  lias  often  justified 
this  breach  of  strict  logic,  on  the  ground  that  Nature  is  too 
vast  and  mysterious,  and  as  yet  unexplored,  to  be  fully  com- 
prt'lMMidcd  by  human  judgments. 

It  cannot  be  denied,  however,  that  on  the  whole  the  progress 

11 


162  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

of  modern  science  is  in  the  direction  of  increasing,  not  only 
our  wonder  and  admiration  before  the  vastness  and  mystery  of 
the  Cosmos,  but  also  our  insight  into  the  wisdom  and  benefi- 
cence of  its  contrivances.  It  is  no  longer  possible  to  explain 
the  performances  of  natural  objects  after  the  type  of  a  machine, 
or  even  of  an  infinitely  intricate  molecular  mechanism.^  The 
very  elements  of  all  living  beings  seem  themselves  to  be  en- 
dowed with  a  selective  and  purposeful  self-activity.  No  known, 
— and  we  may  well  say, — no  conceivable  combination  of  laws 
will  explain,  for  example,  the  behavior  of  the  white  blood- 
corpuscles  in  their  phagocytic  functions,  as  they  suddenly  de- 
velop the  power  of  adapting  themselves  to  situations  and  per- 
formances which  are  as  new  to  them  as  they  are  obscure  and 
intricate  to  human  observation.  These  cells  behave  like  con- 
scious, purposeful,  and  benevolent  living  souls,  rather  than  like 
merely  mechanical  structures.  They  are,  of  course,  dependent 
upon  their  own  structure  and  upon  the  means  to  their  hand, 
so  to  say,  for  their  ability  to  discharge  wisely  and  well  their 
peculiar  functions.  But  so  is  man  himself.  The  spermatozoa, 
too,  seem  to  know  well  how  to  proceed  upon  the  way  to  the 
execution  of  the  purposes  for  which  their  structure,  when  the 
opportunity  comes,  has  previously  fitted  them.  They,  too,  be- 
have like  living  and  embodied  souls,  rather  than  like  merely 
mechanical  existences.  And  the  ovum  which  they  fertilize 
goes  straight  about  its  incredibly  intricate  and  mysterious  busi- 
ness, marshalling  the  corpuscles  upon  which  it  can  lay  hold 
and  building,  with  marvellous  intelligence  and  wisdom,  on  the 
whole,  and  yet  not  without  many  incidental  and  evil  mistakes, 
a  structure  infinitely  more  complex  than  anything  within  the 
power  of  human  wisdom  and  skill.  Nay !  the  very  atoms 
themselves  can  no  longer  be  considered  as  simple  and  structure- 

1  For  the  confession  of  the  failure  of  modern  science  to  "re-express  any- 
vital  phenomenon  in  terms  of  physics  and  chemistry,"  see  Professors  J.  Ar- 
thur Thomson  and  Patrick  Geddes,  and  the  authorities  they  quote :  Ideals 
of  Science  and  Faith,  p.  54/. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  163 

less  beings,  that  are  driven  hither  and  thither  by  external  forces 
in  accordance  with  fixed  laws  imposed  from  without.  Each 
kind,  and  even  each  individual  of  its  kind,  appears  to  have  a 
constitution  and  a  mission  of  its  own  ;  appears  also  to  know 
how  to  make  use  of  this  constitution  in  the  fulfillment  of  its 
peculiar  mission.  Each  one  of  these  atoms  is  forever  solving 
wholly  new  problems,  by  entering  into  wholly  new  combina- 
tions ; — and  all  this  is  done  in  the  interests  of  that  vast  Whole 
of  which  each  atom  is  an  incredibly  minute  and  yet  quite 
specially  significant  part. 

The  modern  scientific  view  of  the  good  and  the  evil  that 
have  been,  and  are,  in  the  world,  and  of  the  manner  and  di- 
rection in  which  the  world's  infinitely  numerous  beings  are 
co-operating  to  the  apparent  realization  of  some  vastly  pro- 
found and  vastly  remote  end,  does  not,  indeed,  completely 
effect  a  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil.  But  it  may  well  make 
our  minds  the  readier  to  listen  to  what  religion  has  to  offer  in 
the  way  of  at  least  an  improved  mental  and  practical  attitude 
toward  this  problem. 

The  attitude  of  religious  experience  toward  the  problem  of 
evil  depends,  of  course,  upon  the  kind  of  religious  belief  and 
sentiment  in  which  the  experience  consists.  And  this  varies 
greatly  in  dependence  upon  the  stage  reached  by  each  religion 
in  respect,  especially,  of  its  intellectual  and  ethical  ideals.  The 
religions  which  were  grouped  together  under  the  vague  title 
of  an  *'  unreflecting  spiritism,"  cannot  even  raise  the  questions 
involved  in  this  profound  problem.  For  their  ethical  stan- 
dards are  too  low  and  too  little  integrated  with  their  religious 
beliefs  ;  and  their  reflective  thinking,  or  pliilosophical  cul- 
ture, is  of  too  primitive  a  tyi)e.  Even  ''polytheism,'*  says 
Tiele,'  "  found  no  difliculty  in  answering  this  (]ues'tion."  Its 
world  of  gfxls  is  of  tf)o  classes.  There  are  evil  spiritual 
powers  that  need  to  l>e  propitiated  and  must  1)0  feared.  And 
there  are  kindly  and  good  gods   with   which   man   may   have 

>  ElenicnLa  of  the  Science  of  Religion,  Second  Series,  p.  9L 


164  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

more  or  less  of  friendly  intercourse, — at  least,  if  one  knows 
how  to  keep  on  good  terras  with  them.  Of  Shinto,  as  says 
Griffis,^  "  it  is  to  be  noted  that  in  the  god-way  the  origin  of 
evil  is  to  be  ascribed  to  evil  gods.  These  Kami  pollute,  and 
pollution  is  iniquity.  From  this  iniquity  the  people  are  to  be 
purged  by  the  gods  of  purification,  to  whom  offerings  are  duly 
made."  All  kinds  of  mischief  and  trouble  come  from  the  bad 
Kami,  Physical  and  moral  or  spiritual  defilement  were  thus 
identified;  and  out  of  this  identification  grew  many  cruel, 
and  also  some  sanitary  and  beneficent,  customs.  The  position 
of  all  the  religions  at  a  certain  stage  of  their  development  is 
essentially  similar  on  this  matter. 

But  indifference  to  the  problem  of  evil,  and  so  crude  a  way 
of  attempting  its  solution,  cannot  abide  the  tests  which  the 
advances  of  race-culture  bring  to  bear  upon  religious  belief. 
As  an  inevitable  result  of  this  advance,  the  great  importance 
of  the  problem  becomes  heightened ;  and  the  process  of  the 
unification  of  knowledge  brings  the  attempts  to  solve  the 
problem  into  more  immediate  relations  with  the  conception  of 
Divine  Being.  In  this  way  a  sort  of  ethical  Dualism  is  the  in- 
evitable result.  It  now  appears  plain  that  there  are  immanent 
and  effective  in  the  World  of  man's  larger  experience,  certain 
forces — powerful,  mysterious,  and  inescapable — which  make  for 
good ;  and  that  there  are  others — even  more  powerful,  and  to 
the  awakened  moral  consciousness  more  mysterious,  while  no 
less  unavoidable — which  make  for  evil.  These  two  sets  of 
forces  seem  to  work  in  a  sort  of  internal  harmony  of  action 
with  themselves ;  but  with  antithetic  tendencies,  and  indeed 
in  the  form  of  a  fierce  and  passionate  struggle,  between  the 
two  sets.  Hence  the  mind  concludes  that  there  is  a  unity  to 
evil,  and  a  kind  of  opposed  unity  to  the  good.  There  is  a 
kingdom  of  happiness,  purity,  and  life ;  there  is  a  kingdom  of 
suffering,  sinning,  and  death.  There  is  God,  and  there  is  the 
Devil, — personified  Good  in  its  totality  and  personified  Evil  in 

1  The  Religions  of  Japan,  p.  78. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  165 

its  totality ;  and  there  is  eternal  warfare  between  the  two. 
Nor  is  the  question  as  to  which  is  superior  and  likely,  or  sure, 
to  win  the  final  victory,  easy  to  solve.  For  the  mind  that 
clings  persistently  to  the  empirical  points  of  view,  especially 
when  these  points  of  view  set  a  high  value  upon  the  good  of 
happiness,  it  is  easier  to  believe  in  many  devils  than  in  one 
perfectly  good  and  holy  God.  The  question  of  the  suffering 
and  puzzled  patriarch  Job:  "Why  do  the  wicked  live,  become 
old,  yea,  are  miglity  in  power?"  becomes  an  unanswerable 
question.  "  How  canst  thou,"  asked  Theognis,  "  O  son  of 
Saturn,  put  the  sinner  and  tlie  just  man  on  the  same  footing  ?" 
But  even  at  tliis  stage  of  reflection  over  the  diverse  phenomena, 
and  of  immaturity  in  ethical  conceptions  and  ideals,  the  faith 
of  religion  espouses  tlie  cause  of  God  against  the  evidence  of 
facts. 

The  resulting  Dualism  of  religious  philosophy  may  take 
either  one  of  two  principal  forms.  It  may  associate  the  good 
divine  beings  and  the  evil  ones,  respectively,  after  the  manner 
of  a  human  social  organization ;  or  it  may  hypostasize  each  of 
the  collective  superhuman  powers  for  good  and  for  evil  in  some 
one  Divine  Being, — thus  representing  both  these  two  sides, 
or  aspects,  of  human  experience.  But  in  either  cjise  the  ten- 
dency of  the  improved  religious  consciousness  is  to  make  the 
Good  superior  in  power  to,  and  finally  triumphant  over,  tlie 
Evil.  The  highest  and  typical  example  of  this  dualistic 
tendency  is  given  by  the  Pereian  religion  in  the  form  in  which 
it  was  established  by  its  great  religious  teacher.  "The  pecu- 
liarity of  the  reform  of  Zanithustra,"  says  Pfleiderer,'  "appears 
to  have  consisted  in  this,  that  lie  placed  the  opposed  spirits  of 
the  Iranian  nature-religion  in  two  hostile  kingdoms,  each  pre- 
sided over  by  a  spiritual  power;  and  that  by  his  exalted  idea 
of  the  nature  of  the  good  (iod  and  (/reator  lie  ap[)roached  closely 
to  monotheiKin."  According  to  the  Bundehosh,  the  Eternal 
and  Aljsolute  Being,  or  First  Cau.se,  produced  out  of  his  own 
»  The  Philosophy  of  Religion,   III,  p.  79/. 


166  PHILOSOPHY  OF  PvELIGION 

substknce  two  great  divine  beings.  Of  these  one,  Ahura-Mazda, 
was  good  and  true  to  his  Creator,  a  King  of  Light ;  and  he  be- 
came head  of  all  that  is  pure  and  good  in  the  world's  existence. 
He,  indeed,  is  himself  to  be  praised  as  the  creator  and  preserver 
and  sole  lord  of  the  world.  But  the  other  was  Ahriman,  King  of 
Darkness,  head  of  an  army  of  bad  spirits,  and  bringer  of  all  kinds 
of  evils  into  a  good  world.  Between  the  two  a  great  world- 
struggle  takes  place  and  continues  through  immense  stretches  of 
time.  But  at  the  last  Ahura  triumphs  over  Ahriman.  For,  in 
truth,  Ahura  is  rather  the  true  and  only  absolute  divine  being ; 
Ahriman  is  but  a  limitation,  a  barrier,  which  will  cease  in  time, 
to  his  perfect  and  absolute  goodness.  And  thus  the  Persian 
religion  comes  very  near  to  the  doctrine  of  a  creation  by  a  good 
God,  that  is  somehow  doomed  to  "  groan  and  travail  together," 
while  it  waits  for  the  completion  of  the  process  of  redemption. 
In  cruder  form  the  North  Germans  and  Scandinavians  looked 
on  human  experience  of  good  and  evil  as  though  it  could  be 
explained  by  a  struggle  of  "  the  good  world-preserving  gods 
with  hostile  elemental  powers."  And  the  Manichsean  heresy 
regarded  evil  as  so  deeply  and  extensively  bedded  in  the  world 
that  it  is  impossible  to  regard  a  perfectly  good  God  as  the 
Creator  and  Redeemer  of  mankind. 

All  such  Dualism,  however,  great  as  is  the  temptation  to 
cling  to  it  as  a  needed  explanation  of  man's  complex  experi- 
ence, and  enormous  as  are  the  difficulties  which  any  logical 
and  consistent  Monism  finds  with  the  problem  of  evil,  is  un- 
able to  endure  the  strain  of  the  uprising  and  uplifting  reflec- 
tion of  the  race.  The  problem  of  evil  as  a  theodicy  may,  in- 
deed, be  intensified  and  made  more  profoundly  mysterious  by  the 
higher  ethical  conceptions  of  God.  But  the  optimistic  faith  of 
religion,  confirmed  or  assisted  by  philosoph}^  seems  to  increase 
its  strength  of  persuasion  and  power  to  convince,  in  even  greater 

ratio. 

The  different  forms  of  a  monistic  philosophy  of  religion  offer 
to  religious  faith  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil  in  different 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  1G7 

ways.  In  general,  however,  a  doctrine  of  salvation  is  its  solu- 
tion. In  the  theodicy  of  Hinduism  the  conception  of  Brahma 
is  the  fundamental  postulate.  All  is  one  ;  and  as  Anaximander 
long  ago  said  :  "  Whence  is  the  origin  of  existing  things,  thence 
also  in  their  passing  away,  according  to  an  inner  necessity." 
From  this  point  of  departure  it  is  but  a  step  to  the  Heraclei- 
tean  doctrine  of  the  periodic  destruction  and  reconstruction  of 
all  existences  through  Brahma.  "  All  comes  from  One,  and 
One  from  All."  But  this  doctrine  must  be  harmonized  with 
the  other  doctrine  of  the  T^panishads, — namely,  that  man's 
soul  is  an  eternal  and  indestructible  entity  ;^  and  that  it  is  of 
such  nature  as  to  carry  over  the  consequences  of  conduct 
from  one  to  another  of  the  stages  of  its  eternal  existence. 
This,  however,  is  an  ethical  postulate.  The  assumption  is 
therefore  made  that  Atman,  or  the  true  Self  of  things,  is  the 
alone  real ;  the  world  of  appearances  in  space  and  time  is 
Maya,  an  illusion,  a  deceptive  image  of  the  true.  Tt  is,  then, 
the  mistaking  of  the  illusory  for  the  true  and  the  real,  of  that 
which  is  only  maya  for  Atman,  which  is  the  source  of  all  evil, 
both  physical  and  moral.  The  essence  of  evil  is  ignorance,  is 
illusion.  How,  then,  sliall  salvation  or  the  rescue  of  the  soul, 
the  triumph  of  good  over  evil,  be  attained?  By  being  disillu- 
sioned ;  by  coming  to  know  Atman  as  the  Alone  Ileal.  Through 
the  knowledge  of  God  the  soul  triumphs  over  all  evil  ;  for  to 
know  Ilim  is  to  know  that  there  is  no  real  evil.  God,  when 
known,  is  his  own  theodicy.  The  glad  tidings  come  announc- 
ing to  the  seeker  for  relief  from  evil :  *'  I  have  heard  it  said 
that  he  who  knows  the  Spirit  passes  beyond  grief."-  Naturally 
enough,  tliis  way  of  resolving  the   problem  of  evil  is  too  high 

•  Sec  Deusscn,  AIlKcrnciiie  GcHchichte  ilcr  I'hilosophie,  I,  ii,  pp.  78//. 
'  Seo  DeuMMCii,  Ihid,  pp.  (i-S/J.     The  .siinie  thouf^ht  is  e\pre.s.sod  in  the  fol- 
lowing hues: — 

Durch  NVi.sHcn  steigen  hIo  iiufwiirt,s 

Dorthin    wo   tliis    V'erlungen    s<*hweigt; 

Nicht  OpferKulxj  reic-ht     dorthin, 

Nicht    Buiuo   dcd    Nichtwi^jtendea. 


168  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

and  steep  for  the  naked  and  bleeding  feet  of  the  millions  who 
toil  over  the  rough  pathway  of  life.  And  the  popular  Brah- 
manic  faith  emphasizes  for  them  the  need  of  strict  compliance 
with  ritual  and  of  obedience  to  the  priest. 

Buddhism  ^  modifies  essentially  the  Brahmanical  doctrine  of 
evil  and  its  dependent  doctrine  of  the  way  to  escape  from  the 
evil — the  way  of  salvation.  For  the  philosopher  it  calls  in 
question  his  conception  of  the  reality  of  soul.  As  to  the  atman 
of  the  individual  man,  Buddhism  altogether  denies  its  reality ;  as 
to  the  universal  Atman,  the  World-Soul,  it  is  sceptical  or  ag- 
nostic. Evil  is,  therefore,  no  longer  conceived  of  simply  as 
maj^a,  the  illusion  which  mistakes  appearance  for  reality,  and 
which  knows  not  the  One  Alone  Real.  The  real  evil  is  Karma, 
or  the  resultant  of  mental  and  bodily  actions,  considered  as 
though  it  were  an  indestructible  entity — the  deathless  self- 
inherited  character  which  results  from  bad  deeds.  The  way 
of  overcoming  this  evil,  the  way  of  salvation,  is  therefore 
neither  the  intuitive  nor  the  contemplative  knowledge  of  At- 
man, with  a  view  to  union  with  him  ;  nor  is  it  the  cultivation 
of  elaborate  ritual,  or  of  obedience  to  the  priesthood.  It  is 
rather  the  life  of  purity  and  love.  By  perpetual  cultivation 
of  Self  in  the  eightfold  path,  one  may  at  last  obtain  release 
from  the  ceaseless  round  of  rebirths, — may  reach  the  goal, 
Nirvana.     Then  he  can  use  the  words  of  an  ancient  poem  : 

"  My  heart  as  it  is,  is  Buddha,  the  living  Buddha, 
And  there  is  no  water  apart  from  the  billow." 

The  problem  of  evil  has  always  weighed  heavily  upon  the 
brain  and  heart  of  Brahmanism  and  of  Buddhism.  Both  find 
its  origin  in  that  Being  of  the  World  with  which  human  weal 
and  woe  is  so  inextricably  bound  up  that  the  responsibility 
for  the  evil  must  somehow  be  divided  between  God  and  man. 
Both  offer  the  hope  of  relief  from  evil  only  to  those  few  who 
can  somehow  so  enter  into  union  with  this  Being  of  the  World 

1  See  further,  Vol.  I  of  this  work,  chap.  XXII:  The  Way  of  Salvation. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  169 

as  to  lose  their  selves  in  It.  And  if  we  consider  the  later 
philosophical  developments  of  Buddhism  as  they  are  recorded 
in  the  Greater  Vehicle,  and  as  they  have  constituted  the 
various  sects  and  schools  of  Japan,  and  compare  them  with 
the  whole  round  of  doctrines  taught  in  the  Upanishads,  the 
main  features  of  all  these  attempts  to  solve  the  problem  of  evil 
do  not  differ  essentially. 

Strictly  speaking,  then,  neither  Brahmanism  nor  Buddliism 
offers  any  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil.  Their  doctrine  of 
the  Divine  Being  is  not  a  theodicy ;  that  is  to  say,  it  does  not 
find  in  God  an  explanation  of  all  existing  evils  which  makes  it 
possible  to  have  a  rational  faith  in  Him,  not  only  as  their  ulti- 
mate origin,  but  also  as  the  guaranty  of  their  overcoming  by 
the  development  of  that  Kingdom  of  God  which  is  the  goal  of 
the  Universe  and  its  all-inclusive  Good.  The  same  thing 
must  be  said  of  Islam  and  of  all  those  forms  of  Christianity 
which,  like  Islam  and  like  popular  Hinduism  and  Buddhism, 
fail  of  finding  the  essence  of  the  Divine  Being  in  ethical  love, 
and  of  fixing  the  goal  of  man's  creation  and  history  in  the 
perfected  Divine  Kingdom.  It  is,  indeed,  in  some  sort  true 
as  Eucken  ^  has  said,  that  the  religious  solution  of  tlie  problem 
of  evil  does  not  attempt  to  anniliilate  evil  or  even  to  lessen  it ; 
it  strives,  the  ratlier,  to  secure  an  inner  triumph  over  the  evil, 
and  thus  to  raise  humanity  above  every  form  of  evil  into  par- 
ticipation in  tlie  Supreme  Good.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  also 
true  that  tlie  complete  and  final  triumpli  of  Divine  Love  over 
every  form  of  evil  must  be  made  an  invincible  faith  of  religion, 
if  religion  is  to  afford  any  satisfactory  help  in  the  solution  of 
the  problem  of  evil.  Later  Buddhism  saw  this  ;  and  it  ac- 
cordingly teaches  that  the  attainment  of  Nirvana  by  the  indi- 
vidual is  not  enough  to  satisfy  him  who  has  the  true  spirit  of 
the  Buddha  (or  the  '*  enlightened ").  The  individual  can 
find  the  solution  of  the  pro])loni  fnr  himneff  only  in  a  faith  and 
a  service  which  accei)t  the  saint;  solution  for  the  race.     Chris- 

1  Dtr  Wahrheit^gfhalt  der  Keligion,  p.  387/. 


170  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

tianity,  too,  after  many  sad  departures  from  its  own  better  and 
truer  conceptions  of  God  and  of  His  Kingdom,  shows  signs  of 
a  return  to  the  same  faith :  God  is  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  and 
His  plan  of  Redemption  is  all-inclusive. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  add  much  in  this  connection  to  what  has 
already  been  said  in  treating  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the 
Way  of  Salvation.^  As  to  the  origin  of  evil,  Christianity  has 
been  encompassed  by  the  same  theoretical  and  practical  dif- 
ficulties, from  which  only  partial  deliverance  is  to  be  found  in 
an  improved  philosophy,  as  those  that  have  encompassed  other 
forms  of  religious  faith.  In  Christ's  time  the  current  views 
on  demonology  are  made  apparent  in  the  Gospel  narratives. 
Indeed,  '*  the  present  dominion  of  evil  demons,  or  of  one  evil 
demon,  was  just  as  generally  presupposed  as  men's  need  of  re- 
demption, which  was  regarded  as  a  result  of  that  dominion." 
And  this  opinion,  which  comes  down  substantially  unchanged 
through  all  the  centuries  of  man's  religious  development,  has 
always  maintained  a  firm  hold  upon  the  popular,  and  even  upon 
the  more  technical  theology  of  Christian  communities.  But 
with  this  theory  another  related  but  not  identical  theory  was 
combined ;  and  "  the  obvious  difficulty  which  the  actual  world, 
with  its  failures  and  imperfections,  presents  to  all  theories  of 
evolution  which  assume  the  existence  of  a  good  and  perfect 
God,  was  bridged  over  by  the  hypothesis  of  a  lapse."  -  One 
section  who  held  this  hypothesis  carried  back  the  fall  out  of 
original  righteousness  ''  from  the  earthly  Paradise  to  the  sphere 
of  divinity  itself."  So  Valentinus  taught ;  and  Marcion  was 
even  accused  of  speaking  of  "  two  gods."  Another  section  held 
the  less  heretical  view — corresponding  to  that  of  Milton's  Para- 
dise Lost — that  there  had  been  a  revolt  among  the  supernal 
powers.  And,  indeed,  this  opinion  seems  to  be  that  of  the 
deutero-canonical  book  of  Revelation  (xx,  1-3). 

1  Vol.  I,  chap.  XXII. 

2  See  Hatch,  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  and  Usages  upon  the  Christian 
Church,  p.  193/. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  171 

No  such  solution  of  the  origin  of  the  evil  could,  however,  be 
accepted  by  the  more  thoughtful  and  logically  consistent 
theologians  of  the  Christian  Church.  Any  "  fall  "  from  origi- 
nal righteousness,  and  the  consequent  prevalence  of  evil  in  a 
world  that  came  from  a  good  and  perfect  God,  must  have  some- 
how originated  in  this  world  itself.  But  how  could  this  be, 
and  yet  the  sovereignty  and  perfection  of  God  remain  unim- 
paired ?  Two  hypotheses  were  indeed  at  hand  :  (1)  That  evil 
was  inherent  in  matter ;  or  (2)  that  the  world  was  itself  created 
by  subordinate  and  imperfect  agents.  But  as  the  conception 
of  the  unity  and  absoluteness  of  God  developed,  in  reflection 
upon  a  basis  of  extending  experience  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
world,  it  excluded  more  and  more  decisively  both  these  ex- 
planations. Thus  the  view  which  may  be  called,  of  all  othere 
the  most  distinctly  Christian,  came  to  prevail.  God  made  tiie 
world  by  the  power  of  his  Logos,  or  the  divine  and  rational 
expression  of  his  Will  ;  therefore  this  world  is  good  in  its  es- 
sential nature.  But  man,  by  the  wrong  exercise  of  his  own 
free  will  has  brought  evil  in  the  form  of  sin,  and  its  conse- 
quences, into  this  good  world.  Perhaps,  no  better  answer 
from  the  religious  point  of  view  will  ever  be  devised  for  the 
problem  of  tlie  origin  of  evil.  It  is  an  attempt  to  adjust  the 
various  elements  that  enter  into  that  religious  experience  which 
reaches  its  culminating  expression  in  the  Christian  conscious- 
ness. This  experience  afTirms  man's  exceeding  ill-desert,  and 
also  the  incomparable  Divine  graciousness.  God  made  a  good 
world  and  made  man  good ;  but  man  made  himself  evil,  and 
thus  lirought  much  evil  into  the  world. 

From  the  modern  point  of  view  as  held  by  science,  and  by  a 
pliilosophy  biused  upon  the  pai'ticular  sciences,  the  religious 
doctrine  of  the  origin  of  evil  is,  indeed,  partial  and  unsatis- 
factory. But  thus  far  the  utmost  insight  and  profouiulest 
rejisonings  of  man  do  not  tiike  liiin  beyond  these  conclusions  : 
In  (unl's  Will,  as  expressed  in  the  constitution  of  nature  and 
of  man,  must  be  found  the  ultimate  Ground  of  both  that  which 


172  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

seems  to  us  evil  and  of  that  which  seems  to  us  good.  Yet 
somehow  or  other,  man  is  now  astray  and  the  world  is  now  awry. 
Both  in  religion  and  in  science  and  philosophy,  the  mind  seeks 
reasons  for  the  faith  that  the  end  will  finally  vindicate  the 
'perfect  wisdom  and  goodness  of  God. 

For  the  individual  believer  the  problem  of  evil  is  solved  by 
his  changed  estimate  of  the  values  of  the  different  goods,  and 
by  his  faith  that  the  changed  attitude  in  which  he  stands  to- 
ward God  secures  for  him  the  supreme  and  all-inclusive  good. 
This  attitude  is  a  voluntary,  ethical,  and  spiritual  union  with 
God.  Indeed,  all  the  higher  religions  make  this  good,  which, 
in  the  scales  of  a  mind  that  can  see  truly,  outweighs  all  the 
evils  of  life,  to  consist  in  some  sort  of  communion  with  the 
divine  beings.  Even  the  lower  forms  of  religion  show  intima- 
tions of  the  same  confidence.  In  Greece,  to  dwell  with  the 
gods  on  Olympus  was  the  highest  wish  of  good  fortune  for 
the  believer  after  death.  The  supreme  desire  of  the  old-Vedic 
Rishis  was  to  be  united  with  Agni,  Varuna,  or  Indra.  And 
when  the  impersonal  principle  Brahma  is  elevated  above  the 
gods,  the  gods  themselves  are  only  gateways  to  the  soul  that 
longs  to  be  absorbed  in  the  higher  good  of  Brahma.  But  above 
all  does  the  Christian  faith  convert  the  bearing  of  all  suffering 
for  the  individual  Self  into  a  loving  and  cheerful  submission 
to  the  will  of  God,  and  the  triumph  over  all  moral  evil,  how- 
ever much  of  painful  self-sacrifice  it  may  involve,  into  a  loving 
divine  service.  Thus  there  is  something  of  the  fine  Stoicism 
about  it,  with  which  the  crippled  slave  philosopher  Epictetus 
referred  to  God's  dealing  with  liim :  "  What  about  my  leg 
being  lamed,  then  ?  "  "  Slave  !  do  you  really  find  fault  with 
the  world  on  account  of  one  bit  of  a  leg  ?  Will  you  not  give 
that  up  to  the  universe  ?  Will  you  not  let  it  go  ?  Will  you 
not  gladly  surrender  it  to  the  giver?  "  But  there  is  also  some- 
thing yet  finer  in  the  way  that  Christian  faith  answers,  for  the 
individual  believer,  the  dark  problem  of  evil.  As  seen  from  its 
point  of  view,  the  minutest  details  of  the  life  of  the  pious  man 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  173 

are  under  the  merciful  and  loving  care  of  a  Heavenly  Father ; 
and  suffering  is  only  a  fiUing-up  of  the  measure  which  Jesus 
had  poured  so  full  from  the  fountain  of  his  self-sacrificing 
love. 

Thus,  for  a  humanity  that  has  the  fullness  of  the  Christian 
faith,  God  is  so  conceived  of  as  to  be  his  own  theodicy.  But 
the  question  recurs  as  to  the  basis  in  fact  upon  which  this  faith 
is  reposed ;  and  as  to  the  rationality  of  the  faith  itself,  when 
taken  in  that  large  way  which  is  necessary  in  order,  even  par- 
tially, to  compass  the  problem  of  the  WorUrs  suffering  and 
moral  failure.  To  this  question  there  are  these  three  consider- 
ations to  be  advanced.  First,  and  now  most  important  of  all, 
the  appearance  and  growth  of  religious  experience  itself  is  of 
immense  value  in  support  of  the  claim  that  God  is  indeed  per- 
fect Ethical  Spirit.  The  experience  is  a  fact.  It  is  one  of 
those  facts  of  an  abiding  and  rising  confidence  in  the  reality  of 
human  ideals,  which  constitute  the  most  significant  and  influen- 
tial factors  in  human  history.  The  grand  conceptions  of  a  per- 
fectly good  God,  and  of  his  Kingdom,  are  with  tlie  race. 
Whence  did  they  come  ?  To  tabulate,  to  estimate  and  to  criti- 
cise, the  empirical  sources,  does  not  suffice  to  account  for  the 
conceptions  themselves.  The  experience  claims  to  be  ahoxtyOV 
of,  the  World-Ground;  its  ultimate  sources  must  be  sought  and 
found,  if  found  at  all,  in  the  reality  of  the  World-Ground.  If 
the  World-Ground  can  be  convicted  of  producing  so  comforting 
and  lofty  an  illusion,  then  it  is  surely  capable — given  lime 
enough — of  vindicating  its  own  character  and  of  proving  that 
the  faith  is  not  an  illusion  ])ut  an  insight  into  the  Reality  cor- 
responding to  its  own  ideal.  Such  testimony  from  religious 
experience,  and  especially  from  the  highest  C/liristian  eon- 
Bciousness,  is  not  indeed  a  demonstration.  But  it  is  of  essen- 
tially the  same  nature  as  all  of  tlie  complex  argument  by  wliich 
we  are  compelled  to  establish  the  rationality  of  man's  faitli  in 
God.  Only  this  particular  experience  is  still  in  the  vuik'nu], 
as  it   were  ;  and   the  problem,  to  the  better  solution  of  which 


174  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

it  promises  its  contribution,  is  so  deep,  and  high,  and  vast  in 
extent,  and  so  dark,  that  a  few  centuries  can  scarcely  be  ex- 
pected to  contribute  a  complete  empirical  solution.  Have  all 
the  countless  records  of  the  countless  biological  ages  served 
as  yet  fully  to  answer  the  problems  of  biological  evolution  ? 

In  saying  this  we  touch  upon  the  second  of  the  more  impor- 
tant suggested  considerations.  The  nearest  which  human  rea- 
son can  come  to  any  theoretical  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil 
must  be  found  in  a  doctrine  of  becoming, — in  a  theory  of  the 
development  of  the  world  within  which  man's  total  experience 
lies.  Such  a  theory  must  be  founded  upon  facts ;  and  the  facts 
upon  which  it  is  founded,  if  it  is  to  have  any  value  beyond 
that  of  a  pleasant  dream  or  a  fanciful  hypothesis,  must  be  facts 
of  the  world's  actual  history.  Among  these  facts,  however, 
and  by  no  means  of  least  account  in  determining  the  character 
of  man's  evolution,  are  those  which  pertain  to  the  religious 
and  moral  history  of  mankind.  Christianity's  doctrine  of  this 
development  regards  it  all  as  somehow  falling  under  the  di- 
vinely ordered  scheme  of  redemption ;  it  is  all  the  history  of 
the  coming  in  its  perfection  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that  Christianity — like 
Brahmanism,  Buddhism,  and  Zoroastrianism,  in  this  respect — 
does  not  offer  itself  as  an  immediate  and  direct  cure  for  all  the 
evils  of  the  world.  Neither  does  it  promise  any  indirect  and 
final  cure  in  this  life  for  all  those  experiences  which  are  es- 
teemed evil  by  man,  and  which  are  really  evil  from  the  point 
of  view  of  his  sentient  nature  and  natural  desire  for  happiness. 
Salvation  offers  primarily  a  cure  for  man's  sinful  attitude 
toward  God,  and  for  its  evil  nature  and  consequences. 

Tlie  reasonableness  and  hopefulness  of  this  offer  is  supported 
by  two  tenets  of  faith,  in  which  all  the  greater  religions  have  a 
share,  but  which  Christianity  has  perfected  in  their  more  elab- 
orate and  logically  consistent  form.  These  are  the  doctrine  of 
the  Future  Life,  and  the  related  doctrine  of  the  final  triumph 
of   the  Social   Ideal.     In   general,  the   religious  which  have, 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  175 

partly  through  other  considerations,  arrived  at  the  belief  in 
immortality,  have  felt  the  need  of  this  belief  in  order  to  main- 
tain any  satisfactory  view  of  the  problem  of  evil.  "  Thus," 
says  D'Alviella,  "most  peoples  have  sought  in  doctrines  of  a 
future  life  the  means  of  repairing  the  evils  and  injustices  of 
the  present."  It  is  Christianity,  however,  which,  by  its  un- 
folding of  the  belief  of  Judaism  in  a  social  redemption  of  the 
righteous  and  the  faithful,  has  offered  for  the  solution  of  the 
problem  of  evil  a  faith  in  the  progressive  and  finally  perfected 
triumph  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  But  these  tenets  of  religious 
faith  await  the  critical  and  reflective  but  sympathetic  treat- 
ment offered  by  the  philosopliy  of  religion. 

In  conclusion  it  should  be  noticed  that,  for  the  faith  of  re- 
ligion, much  of  the  evil  of  the  world  can  scarcely  be  said  to  be 
evil  at  all.  vSo  far  does  religion  go  in  its  use  of  the  instru- 
mental theory  of  the  evil  of  suffering,  and  even  of  sin.  Re- 
ligion itself  is,  indeed,  born  in  humanity  through  the  travail 
of  desire  to  get  rid  of  the  evil — both  the  evil  without  and  the 
evil  within.  As  the  development  of  religion  proceeds,  the 
moral  purification  and  spiritual  insight  that  lead  to  commun- 
ion with  God,  and  to  a  union  with  Him  which — we  might  al- 
most say — is  "  for  better  or  for  worse,"  become  the  things  of 
highest  worth  to  the  religious  mind.  This  longing  for  deliv- 
erance then  develops  that  despair  of  self-deliverance,  or  of 
other  deliverance  at  the  liand  of  man,  wliich  is,  on  its  other 
side,  the  yearning  for  redemption.  The  great  and  final  func- 
tion of  religion  is  the  ministry  to  this  yearning;  tliis  is  the 
Work  of  Redemption.  To  this  subjective  attitude  religion 
holds  out  the  hope  of  vanquishing  the  evil.  The  evil  of  suf- 
fering is  to  be  overcome  by  piously  bearing  it  as  an  expression 
of  God's  will  under  the  conditions  of  living  assigned  to  the 
individual;  and  by  doing  what  can  wisely  l)e  done  to  remove 
it  from  others,  by  use  of  means  that  accord  with  the  Divine 
righteousness.  The  evil  of  sin  is  to  be  vanquished  by  availing 
one's  self  of  the  Divine  help,  and  by  helping  others  to  escape  ;  in 


176  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

a  word,  by  conforming  to  the  conditions  set  by  God's  good 
Will  for  the  establishment,  growth,  and  final  triumphs  of  his 
Kingdom  among  men. 

Let  us,  therefore,  be  content  at  present  to  put  the  solution 
of  the  problem  of  evil  which  religion  offers,  in  hypothetical 
and  negative  form.  Unless  the  historical  evolution  of  the 
human  race,  as  a  part  of  the  World- All,  may  be  believed  to 
be  directed  toward,  and  to  be  secure  in,  the  final  triumph  of 
that  all-inclusive  Good,  which  all  the  other  great  religions 
dimly  foreshadow,  and  which  Christianity  denominates  "  Eter- 
nal Life  in  the  Kingdom  of  God,"  there  is  no  possible  solution 
to  be  discovered  or  even  imagined  for  this  dark  problem.  The 
summation  of  what  is  called  "  earthly  good,"  were  it  possible,  as 
it  is  not,  that  it  should  be  attained  for  the  race  under  the  fixed 
conditions  of  its  earthly  environment,  would  not  abolish  the 
conflict  between  good  and  evil,  and  the  resulting  schism  in 
man's  soul.  The  hope  of  an  Ideal  Good,  that  is  spiritual  and 
collective,  is  held  out  by  religion.  The  faith  in  the  securing 
of  this  good  as  the  fixed  purpose  of  God,  through  a  process  of 
development,  is  religion's  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil.  Con- 
firmations, that  find  a  certain  broadening  basis  in  our  experi- 
ence of  the  world,  are  accumulating  in  the  storehouses  of  the 
particular  sciences.  And  although  the  evidence  is  far  from 
being  theoretically  complete,  its  general  nature  is  similar  to 
that  upon  which  repose  the  most  important  postulates  of  man's 
intellectual  and  practical  life  and  development. 


CHAPTER   XXXIII 

THE  MOKAL  ATTPwIBUTES 

It  is  impossible  logically  to  explain  and  defend,  or  to  make 
practically  effective,  the  demands  of  religion  upon  the  soul  of 
man  for  a  right  attitude  toward  the  Object  of  religious  faith, 
without  endowing  the  conception  of  this  Object  with  certain 
moral  attributes.  In  a  word,  God  cannot  be  realized  as  God 
in  man's  life,  if  conceived  of  as  devoid  of  all  ethical  qualifica- 
tions. This  is  true,  however  obscure,  meagre,  and  abstract, 
that  conception  of  the  Divine  Being  which  is  presented  in  or- 
der to  arouse  the  feelings  and  control  the  life.  If,  for  example, 
the  Chinese  conception  of  Heaven  and  Earth  as  Shang  Ti  is  of- 
ten made  to  appear  as  distinctly  impersonal,  and  at  best  is  never 
fully  personal ;  none  the  less  are  Heaven  and  Earth  treated  in 
Chinese  thought  and  practice,  as  worthy,  for  their  justice  and 
beneficence,  of  the  adoration,  confidence,  and  service  of  man. 
The  vaguest  pantheism  of  India  is  customarily  most  pro- 
nounced in  that  kind  of  '*  emotionalism  "  which  is  impossible 
without  some  Vjelief  in  the  r^iasi-mond  character  of  its  object. 
**  When  one  loves  Him,  fixes  himself  on  Him  and  makes  him- 
self at  one  with  Him,  then  comes  about  the  cessation  of  the 
world  of  delusion"^  (that  is,  salvation).  But  especially  in 
Judaism  did  the  ''  righteousness,"  and  later  tlie  "loving  kind- 
ness,'* or  mercifulness,  of  God  serve,  above  all  other  attributes, 
to  define  and  commend  Him  to  the  believer's  faith.  While 
Christianity  reiterates  and  enforces  the  declaration  that  God  is 
most  essentially, — not  omnipotence,  and  omniscience,  and  omni- 
presence (although  He  is  all  these),  but  Ethical  Love. 

*  See  chap.  I,  of  the  Tpaniwhad  of  the  Krishaa  Yajur  Veda. 

12 


178  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

In  the  case  of  all  the  so-called  "  moral  attributes,"  before 
approaching  the  problem  of  their  applicability  to  the  Divine 
Being,  it  is  of  primary  importance  to  understand  precisely 
what  it  is  proposed  to  attribute.  And  here  the  inquiry  is  im- 
mediately involved  in  serious  difficulties  that  arise  from  two 
somewhat  antithetic  positions,  and  that  lead  in  two  opposite 
directions.  On  the  one  hand,  if  the  ordinary  and  uncriticised 
conceptions  of  the  moral  attributes — of  what  it  is,  to  be  "  per- 
fectly just  and  good  " — are  applied  to  the  Personal  Absolute, 
the  immensity  of  the  problems  suggested  is  such  as  to  surpass 
the  limitations  of  human  thinking  and  imagination.  In  their 
range  over  vast  multitudes,  through  incalculable  stretches  of 
space  and  time,  and  with  so  many  considerations  that  are  ob- 
scure, or  wholly  hidden,  these  problems  are  quite  unmanage- 
able by  the  empirical  method.  We  end  by  saying  :  God  may  be 
perfectly  just  and  good  ;  but  it  cannot  be  told  "  how  "  in  terms 
of  our  human  experience  with  ethical  conditions,  maxims,  and 
ideas.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  we  follow  the  unfortunate 
method  which  makes  a  demand  iov  faith  in  God's  perfect  jus- 
tice and  goodness,  after  God  has  virtually  been  convicted  of 
injustice  and  cruelty,  we  disturb  in  a  yet  more  serious  way  the 
very  foundations  of  every  degree  and  kind  of  religious  knoivl- 
edge. 

What  has  just  been  said  is  particularly  true  of  so  vague  and 
shifty,  yet  fundamental,  a  conception  as  that  of  Justice.  The 
world  over,  in  modern  times,  all  classes  of  men  are  coming  to 
regard  the  claim  to  "justice"  as  an  inalienable  right  of  hu- 
manity ;  in  the  name  of  justice  they  are  passionately  demand- 
ing such  a  redistribution  of  the  "  goods  "  of  life  as  would  seem 
to  be  inherently  inconsistent  with  the  very  nature  of  their  phys- 
ical and  social  environment.  What  wonder,  then,  that  God 
seems  unjust,  when  the  same  conception  of  the  right  to  just 
treatment,  with  its  accompanying  demand,  is  transferred  to 
Him?  In  the  same  way,  and  largely  as  due  to  the  same 
causes,  the  notion  of  mankind  as  to  what  it  is  to  be  perfectly 


THE  MORAL  ATTRIBUTES  179 

"  good  "  and  "  kind  "  has  undergone  important  changes.  No 
serious  student  of  the  fundamental  conceptions  of  ethics  can 
for  a  moment  admit  that  all  these  changes  are  for  the  better. 
When  men  call  by  these  titles  those  persons,  laws,  and  institu- 
tions, which  for  the  time  being  at  least  seem  to  contribute  most 
abundantly  to  their  own  individual  happiness,  how  shall  one 
manage  to  convince  them  that  the  omnipotent  and  omniscient 
God  is  perfectly  good — after  the  same  low  and  unworthy  pat- 
tern of  goodness  ?  A  preliminary  examination  of  the  nature 
of  these  moral  attributes  themselves  would  seem,  then,  to  be 
indispensable  to  a  theodicy.^ 

The  psychological  origin  and  character  of  the  conception  of 
Justice,  as  well  as  its  historical  evolution  and  progressive  ap- 
plication to  the  Divine  Being,  are  very  complex  and,  in  many 
important  respects,  obscure.  In  general,  however,  the  concep- 
tion of  this  moral  attribute  has  followed  the  same  law  which 
has  characterized  the  evolution  of  the  conceptions  attached  to 
all  the  other  so-called  virtuous  forms  of  human  conduct.  Its 
progress  has  been  in  the  direction  of  recognizing  the  essential 
unity  of  the  virtues,  and  the  essential  spiritual  unity  of  the 
human  race.  In  this  way  a  certain  imperfect  and  faulty  prac- 
tice of  justice  has  been  extended,  from  its  former  application 
to  favored  classes,  to  a  more  general  application  over  a  larger 
proportion  of  mankind.  Yet  nothing  ever  done  by  the  most 
savage  people  can  exceed  the  essential  injustice,  which  is 
still  done  in  the  name  of  justice  b}'  the  so-called  *'  superior " 
to  the  so-called  "  inferior  "  races;  and  by  the  favored  classes 
in  the  most  civilized  nations,  to  ckisses  that  are  less  fortu- 
nate. 

When  we  ask  oui-selves,  What  are  the  essential  marks  of 
the  nujst  nitional  conception  of  justice  jvs  men  iipply  tliis  torin 
to  their  own  Ixjhavior  toward  their  fellows?  these  two  con- 
siderations become  iinportiint.      First,  the  conception  of  even 

'  For  a  fuller  trcutmcnt  of  thct«c  topics  see  the  uutlior'M  rhili>s<.>phy  of  Con- 
duct,   I'art  Second,   "The   Virtuoua   Life." 


180  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  lowest  savages  is  much  superior  to  their  practice.  "  Their 
notions,"  says  Mariner  of  the  Tongan  Islanders,  ''  in  respect  to 
honor  and  justice,  are  tolerably  well-defined,  steady,  and  uni- 
versal ;  but  in  point  of  practice,  both  chiefs  and  people  are 
irregular  and  fickle."  What  better,  however,  can  be  said  of 
"  both  chiefs  and  people "  of  America  or  of  Great  Britain, 
where  the  acknowledged  rights  of  justice  have  perhaps  reached 
their  highest  development  ?  But,  second,  the  so-called  "  even- 
handed  justice  "  which 

"  Commends  the  ingredients  of  our  poisoned  chalice 
To  our  own  lips  " — 

as  well  as  to  the  lips  of  others,  is  not  the  equivalent  of  perfect 
justice,  in  the  higher  meaning  of  the  words.  The  higher 
meaning  recognizes  the  compatibility  of  this  moral  attribute 
with  the  attributes  of  kindness,  goodness,  and  benevolence. 
It  is  the  '*  higher  justice  "  which  Aristotle  recognized  ^  as  a 
"  complete  virtue,  although  not  complete  in  an  absolute  sense, 
but  in  relation  to  one's  neighbor."  Such  justice  is  "not  a 
part  of  virtue,  but  the  whole  of  virtue  ;  "  it  is  "  the  chief  of 
virtues ;  "  it  is  so  supreme  a  quality  of  personal  life  that  "  nei- 
ther evening  nor  morning  star  is  so  lovely."  It  is  such  jus- 
tice, then,  that  the  most  developed  religious  faith  attributes,  in 
its  perfection,  to  the  Divine  Being. 

From  this  point  of  view,  justice  is  conceived  of  as  an  ideal 
virtue,  worthy  to  determine  all  the  relations  and  behavior  of 
men  to  one  another.  It  is  "  the  voluntar}^  judgment  (and 
corresponding  practice)  which  duly  apportions  to  individual 
men  their  share  of  the  goods  and  the  evils  of  life,  so  far  as 
these  goods  and  evils  are  dependent  upon  human  conduct."'^ 
But  all  attempts  at  perfect  justice  among  men  are  doomed  to 
failure  because  of  the  inescapable  limitations,  in  spite  of  the 
best  intentions,  both  of  wisdom  to  determine  what  this  fair 
share  is,  and  also  of  power  to  carry  out  the  apportionment  of 

1  Nieom.  Eth.,  Book  V. 

3  Quoted  from  the  author's  Philosophy  of  Conduct,  p.  287. 


THE  MORAL  ATTRIBUTES  181 

the  goods  and  evils  of  life  in  accordance  with  the  wisest  and 
best  judgment.  When,  then,  inquiry  is  made  into  the  per- 
fection of  God's  justice,  the  essential  limitations  to  it  which 
come  from  man's  lack  of  wisdom  and  power  have  already  been 
theoretically  set  aside.  But  the  difficulties  which  these  limi- 
tations impose  upon  man's  critical  estimate  of  this  perfection 
remain  irremovably  attached  to  the  very  conditions  of  the 
problem.  What  are  these  ''  real "  goods ;  and  what  these 
"  real  "  evils  ?  What  is  each  man's  fair  share  ?  How  and 
when  should  the  distribution  take  place  in  order  to  vindicate 
the  perfection  of  Divine  Justice  ? 

This,  then,  is  the  question  which  the  religious  faith  of  hu- 
manity presents  to  experience  for  an  answer:  "Art  Thou, 
then,  perfectly  just  after  the  pattern  of  my  heart's  highest  and 
noblest  ideal  ?  "  The  history  of  man's  religious  development 
sliows  that  the  answers  to  this  question  liave  depended  upon 
the  ethical  attainments,  and  ethical  ideals,  which  have  charac- 
terized the  different  stages  of  this  development.  There  is 
always  something  strange  and  paradoxical  about  man's  belief  in 
the  Divine  Justice.  The  very  experiences  which  make  it  so  diffi- 
cult to  believe  that  God  is  perfectly  just  are  the  experiences 
out  of  which  has  chiefly  arisen  the  Ijelief  in  His  perfect  justice. 
Were  not  man's  social  environment  in  this  life  so  full  of  the 
oppressive  marks  of  iniquity  and  injustice,  there  would  be 
little  or  no  impulse  to  appeal  from  earthly  and  temporal  ex- 
perience, to  the  justice  to  be  done  in  the  future  life,  to  the 
justice  of  heaven,  or  of  God.  Were  perfect  justice  possible  of 
realization  at  the  liands  of  men,  then  men  would  not  look  else- 
where in  prayer,  faith,  and  hope,  for  any  nearer  approaches  to 
such  justice.  "  May  neither  I  nor  my  son,"  sings  Hesiod,' 
''  now  be  just  among  men,  since  it  is  an  evil  thing  for  a  man 
U)  be  just  ;  if  indeed  the  unjust  are  to  secure  the  larger  rights. 
Yet  I  do  not  hold  thai  Zeus,  who  exulus  in  the  thunderbolt, 
will  allow  this."     The  most  lofty  ascriptions  of  this  virtue  to 

>  Works  and  Days,  270-273 


182  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  gods  on  the  part  of  the  early  religions  of  Babylonia  and 
Assyria  are  incantations.  They  attribute  it  to  the  divine 
powers  in  the  hope  that  these  powers  will  assist  the  believer 
in  getting  justice  done  to  him  by  his  fellow  men. 

The  belief  in  the  Divine  Justice,  which  has  always  so  largely 
had  its  origin  in  the  experience  of  injustice,  has  undergone  a 
development  in  dependence  upon  the  rising  grades  of  race- 
culture,  especially  in  the  form  of  an  improvement  in  civil  and 
political  morals  and  in  moral  ideals.  In  the  stage  of  unre- 
flecting spiritism  little  demand  for  this  virtue  is  made  upon 
the  invisible  superhuman  powers.  But,  as  sa3^s  D'AlvielhV 
*'  man  comes  at  last  to  ascribe  to  his  deity  only  the  two  loftiest 
sentiments  of  the  human  soul,  justice  and  love."  The  im- 
proved expression  and  stability  of  the  conception  of  that  vir- 
tue which  Aristotle  called  "general  justice"  is  the  effect  of 
growth  in  those  moral  elements  of  political  and  social  life 
to  which  these  sentiments  correspond.  It  was  a  slow  and  weary 
climb  of  religious  belief  to  the  place  where  this  moral  attribute 
became  an  essential  factor  in  the  conception  of  the  Divine 
Being.  Israel  did  not  reach  it,  as  the  teachings  of  the  Old 
Testament  plainly  show.  Yahweh  was  indeed  a  righteous 
God  ;  but  his  righteousness  did  not  exclude  passionate  resent- 
ment, jealousy,  love  of  praise,  and  partiality. 

In  the  earlier  centuries  of  the  development  of  Semitic  re- 
ligion the  type  which  prevailed  among  the  Babylonians  and 
Assyrians  had  reached  certain  expressions — although  in  the 
form  of  incantations — which  are  quite  upon  a  level  morally 
with  most  of  the  teachings  of  Judaism.  In  one  of  the  hymns 
to  Shamash,  the  sun-god,  he  is  addressed  as  the  judge  of  all 
mankind' : — 

"  The  law  of  mankind,  dost  thou  direct, 
Eternally  just  in  tlie  heavens  art  thou, 
Of  faithful  judgment  toward  all  the  world  art  thou. 
Thou  knowest  what  is  right,  thou  knowest  what  is  wrong." 

1  Origin  and  Growth  of  the  Conception  of  God,  p.  202, 

2  See  Jastrow,  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  300/. 


THE  MORAL  ATTRIBUTES  183 

On  ascending  his  throne  Nebuchadnezzar  addresses  the  great 

God  Marduk  :     "  Guide  me  on  the  right  path Cause 

me  to  love  thy  supreme  rule."  And  an  elaborate  hymn  to 
the  moon-god  Sin  affirms  :  "  Thy  strong  command  produces 
right  and  proclaims  justice  to  mankind."  To  the  early  gods 
of  India,  on  the  contrary,  justice  is  seldom  or  never  attributed. 
The  sun-god,  addressed  as  Savitar,  is  called  "  He  who  distrib- 
utes gifts  unto  the  sons  of  men,"  and  is  appealed  to  for  the 
best  of  all  gifts  to  mortals,  "  a  long  enduring  life."  Of  Indra 
it  is  said  :  "  What  he  hath  established,  there  is  none  impairs 
it."  And  of  Agni  it  is  affirmed  :  **  Thou  doest  good  to  every 
man  that  serves  thee.  Although  in  the  later  beliefs  Dharma, 
or  personified  Right,  "  takes  his  seat  with  shadowy  Brahma 
among  the  other  gods,"  and  although  the  conception  persists 
as  Dharma  Vaivasvata,  or  Justice,  the  belief  in  a  perfect  over- 
ruling Divine  Righteousness  has  never,  down  to  the  latest 
times,  been  vital  and  potent  in  the  indigenous  religions  of 
India.  "  Few  of  the  older  gods  are  virtuous,"  says  Professor 
Hopkins,^  *' and  Right,  even  in  the  Rig  Veda,  is  the  moral 
power,  Right  as  Order,  correct  behavior,  the  prototype  both  of 
ritual  and  of  dcdrn^  custom,  which  rules  the  gods."  The  doc- 
trine of  the  Chinese,  however,  as  might  l)e  expected,  holds  to 
very  strict  tenets  respecting  the  application  to  human  affairs 
of  the  perfect  justice  whicli  belongs  to  Heaven,  as  the  Su- 
preme Lord.  Confucius  taught  that  if  the  people  cease  to 
follow  Tao  ('*  tlie  heavenly  way  "),  Heaven  will  in  its  turn 
ups(*t  the  cosmic  order.  A  proclamation  of  the  emperor  Yong- 
Tcheng,  1731,  declares:  ''Justice,  originally  aroused  by 
heaven  and  l)y  man,  answers  more  swiftly  tlian  the  echo. 
The  floods  and  droughts,  or  disasters,  which  trouble  all  the 
eartli  come  from  the  acts  of  man." 

Among  the  Greeks,  in  the  period  of  the  greater  tragedians, 
faitli  in  the  perfection  of  the  divine  justice  was  growing  in  the 
minds  of   the  thouglitfiil.      Hesiod   hail   indeed  declared    that 

•  Religiuna  of  Iiiciia,  pp.  'Jl'.)/..  ^^'y\/.  ami  noU?. 


184  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

"  Justice  is  the  virgin  daughter  of  Zeus,  honored  and  revered  by 
the  gods  who  hold  Olympus."  "  If  the  gods  do  aught  that  is 
base,"  said  Euripides,  "  they  are  not  gods."  But  it  was  Plu- 
tarch who  reached  the  height  of  intelligent  conviction  when  he 
could  affirm  :  "  God,  being  perfectly  good,  lacks  not  any  virtue : 
and  least  of  all  in  what  concerns  justice  and  love."  Indeed,  the 
theodicy  ^  of  this  Greek  theologian  is,  in  respect  of  philosophical 
insight,  moral  spirit,  and  courageous  facing  of  the  facts,  quite 
superior  to  that  of  Leibnitz.  Among  the  Romans,  the  tendency 
early  developed  to  personify  the  ethical  attributes  and  assign 
them  to  separate  gods  ;  this  tendency  led  to  the  conception  of 
Fides  who,  according  to  Preller,  was  attached  to  Jupiter,  Con- 
cordia to  Venus,  Pudicitia  to  Juno,  etc.  But  the  Roman  mind 
seemed  unable  to  develop  the  conception  of  one  perfectly  just 
and  loving  Divine  Being.  Among  the  early  Teutons,  a  con- 
ception of  the  gods  as  representing  and  enforcing  principles  of 
order,  and  certain  rude  and  cruel  practices  connected  with  the 
execution  of  justice,  were  not  wholly  wanting.  "  In  the  popu- 
lar assemblies,"  says  De  la  Saussaye^  "at  full  and  new  moon, 
the  functions  performed  by  the  priest  were,  next  to  the  influ- 
ence and  authority  of  the  leaders,  almost  the  only  element  that 
brought  some  degree  of  regularity  to  the  frequently  unorderly 
deliberations."  In  some  sort,  the  gods  and  their  earthly  repre- 
sentatives took  the  part  of  an  attempt  at  justice  in  the  distri- 
bution of  the  goods  and  evils  of  life.  But  up  to  the  time  when 
the  Teutonic  tribes  accepted  Christianity,  and  for  the  multitude 
long  after  that  time,  the  conception  of  God  as  the  Source  of 
even  an  imperfect  justice  was  scarcely  formed.  In  general,  the 
pagan  deities  were,  as  respects  the  standard  of  their  moral 
character,  below  rather  than  above  that  set  by  the  lives  of  the 
leaders  or  by  the  councils  of  the  people.  Christianity  itself 
"  was  not  preached  to  the  Norseman  as  a  new  (and  higher) 

1  De  Sera  Numinis  Vindicta,  and  compare  Oakesmith,  The  Religion  of 
Plutarch,  p.  104  and  note. 

2  The  Religion  of  the  Teutons,  p.  103. 


THE  MORAL  ATTRIBUTES  185 

moral  ideal."  *'  Put  your  faith  in  God,  and  believe  that  he  is 
so  merciful  that  he  will  not  let  us  burn  both  in  this  world  and 
in  the  next  " — is  an  exhortation  which  measures  the  purity  of 
their  best  conception  of  the  Divine  moral  rule. 

By  the  moral  attribute  of  Goodness  as  applied  to  God,  men 
mean  something  more  than  justice  as  this  latter  word  is  ordi- 
narily understood  ;  and  yet  goodness  cannot  exist  apart  from,  or 
to  the  exclusion  of,  the  attribute  of  justice.  The  "  general 
justice,"  which  Aristotle  considered  the  complete  virtue  so  far 
as  the  relations  of  an  individual  to  his  neighbors  are  concerned, 
is  nearly,  if  not  quite,  the  equivalent  of  "being  good"  in  the 
fuller  meaning  of  the  term.  But  goodness  emphasizes  the 
kindliness,  the  positive  well-wishing  and  active  disposition  to 
benefit  others,  for  which,  when  the  attribute  is  applied  to  Deity, 
the  title  of  benevolence  or  love  (in  the  theological  meaning  of 
the  words)  often  seems  more  appropriate. 

The  history  of  the  evolution  of  religious  faith  in  the  good- 
ness of  God  corresponds,  in  all  essential  points  to  that  of  faith  in 
his  justice ;  indeed,  the  conception  of  justice  and  goodness  go 
forward  hand  in  hand,  although  not  always  with  an  equal 
step;  and  lx)th  represent  a  slow  and  painful  uplifting  of  man's 
reflective  thought  in  his  effort  to  account  for  his  total  expe- 
rience. In  the  lower  stages  of  an  unreflecting  spiritism,  the 
impressive  thing  is  the  consciousness  of  the  powers  of  evil  that 
reside  somewhere  in  the  external  world  and  are  beyond  the 
control  of  man's  will.  It  is,  therefore,  much  easier  for  man 
at  this  stage  to  believe  in  many  devils  than  in  a  few  good  and 
controlling  divine  powers.  Faith  in  One  perfectly  good  and 
loving  Divine  Being  is  still  far  away  from  either  the  gnu<?p  of 
intellect  or  the  seizure  of  emotion.  Tlie  persistence  of  devil- 
woi-ship  in  Ceylon,  Burmah,  and  elsewliere,  and  of  prophylac- 
tic ceremonials  in  Chinji  and  other  lands,  where  tlio  kindly 
religion  of  liuddhism  lias  In't'ii  dominant  for  centuries,  illus- 
tnites  the  sanu*  truth.  Tlif  widespreadini^  existence  of  incan- 
tations, of  magic,  and  propitiatory  prayei*s  and  sacrifices,  does 


186  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

not  have  its  origin  in  the  consciousness  of  sin,  and  of  depen- 
dence for  help  and  salvation  upon  the  gracious  love  of  God  ; 
it  springs,  the  rather,  from  the  experience  of  manifold  physical 
and  social  evils,  and  from  the  desire  to  influence  the  spiritual 
powers  which  are  showing  their  ill-will  by  inflicting  these  evils. 

Yet  even  in  not  a  few  of  the  earlier  prayers,  hymns,  and 
other  expressions  of  religious  belief,  as  well  as  in  certain  forms 
of  ceremony  and  worship,  there  are  discoverable  the  germs  of 
a  confidence  in  the  goodness  and  love  of  the  divine  powers. 
Some,  at  least,  of  the  gods  are  good  fellows,  and  are  well- 
disposed  toward  mankind.  The  development  of  belief  in  the 
Divine  goodness  reaches  its  next  higher  stage  in  the  confidence 
that  the  domestic  and  tribal  divinities  are  kindly  disposed 
toward  the  families  and  tribes  whose  special  divinities  they 
are  chosen  to  be.  At  this  stage,  one  of  the  most  marked  evi- 
dences of  the  goodness  of  the  god  is  his  defence  of  his  followers 
against  their  enemies,  or  his  willingness  to  inflict  evil  upon 
these  enemies. 

Thus  the  virtue  of  goodness,  in  the  dawning  conception  of 
God  as  ethical  spirit,  is  little  more  than  good-nature  or  good- 
fellowship.  But  few  of  even  the  evil  gods  are  so  malignant 
that  they  cannot  be  made  good-natured  by  treating  them  prop- 
erly. In  Genesis  xviii,  Yahweh  comes  down  and  sits  with 
Abraham  at  a  meal.  But  when  the  deity  is  thought  of  as  hav- 
ing his  seat  in  heaven,  the  burning  of  the  sacrifice  sends  up  a 
"  sweet  savor ; "  and  he  is  thus  made  well-disposed.  Out  of 
this  stage  the  belief  of  Judaism  in  the  goodness  of  Yahweh 
scarcely  succeeded  in  rising  during  the  entire  history  of  the 
Old-Testament  religion.  The  belief  that  he  was  merciful 
and  loving  toward  his  people, — i.  e.,  good  as  well  as  Just  in  the 
stricter  meaning  of  the  latter  term  as  a  faithful  keeper  of  his 
covenanted  word — did,  however,  come  to  make  a  more  or  less 
integral  part  of  the  faith  of  Judaism  in  the  perfect  righteous- 
ness of  God.  And  Judaism  had  the  rare  merit,  in  its  later 
and  higher  developments,  of  proclaiming,  with  certain  irregular 


THE  MORAL  ATTRIBUTES  187 

flashes  of  moral  insight,  that  faith  iu  the  perfect  Divine  good- 
ness as  perpetually  shown  toward  all  mankind,  which,  however 
difficult  of  reconciliation  with  the  facts  of  experience  and  with 
the  conception  of  a  complete  retributive  justice,  was  the  set- 
tled and  divinely  inspired  conviction  of  the  Founder  of 
Christianitv. 

If  by  Christianity  we  understand  the  "  religion  of  Christ," 
in  the  meaning  which  Lessing  attached  to  this  phrase,  we  find 
that  an  unquestioning  faith  in  the  perfect  justice  and  goodness 
of  God  springs  as  an  unquestioned  conviction  from  the  full 
consciousness  of  perfect  moral  union  with  God.  Tliis  con- 
sciousness is  the  essence  of  religion,  namely,  the  attitude  of 
filial  piety  toward  the  Divine  Being ;  and  in  Jesus  it  reaches 
its  highest  expression  through  the  perfection  of  the  spirit  of 
sonship  in  him.  As  has  already  been  said,  this  view  of  God, 
under  the  Christian  figure  of  speecli  which  regards  Him  as 
the  Heavenly  Father,  had  been  coming  into  the  better  and 
higher  religious  beliefs  of  Judaism.  "  When  Israel  was  a  child, 
then  I  loved  him  and  called  my  son  out  of  Egypt  (Hos.  xi,  1) 
does,  indeed,  only  succeed  in  glorifying  God  as  the  tribal  di- 
vinity. "  Have  we  not  all  one  Father  ?  Hath  not  God  created 
us?"  (Mai.  ii,  10)  are  questions,  and  tlie  answer,  **  Doubtless 
thou  art  our  Father,  O  Lord ;  thou  art  our  Father,  our  Re- 
deemer" (Isa.  Ixiii,  16)  is  an  answer,  whicli  prepares  the  way 
for  the  Christian  position.  Some  of  the  later  rabbis  extended 
the  belief  in  the  fatherhood  of  God  beyond  the  tribal  and  na- 
tional limits.  Rabbi  Zadok,  for  example,  addresses  the  Divine 
Being  lus  *'  Lord  of  the  world ;  Thou  Father  in  Heaven." 

The  "religion  of  Christ"  does  not,  however,  furnish  ready- 
made  arguments  for  the  perfect  justice  and  goodness  of  God ; 
nor  does  it  embark  upon  the  effort  to  minimize,  or  even  to 
understiind,  the  meaninc^  of  all  that  evil  of  the  world  which 
seems  to  contradict  its  own  sublimely  audacious  faith.  Accord- 
ing to  Jesus,  the  sunshine  and  the  rain  are  bestowed  upon  the 
good  and  the  bad  alike  ;  but  tliis  is  not  a  proof  of  the  injustice, 


188  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

but  of  the  supreme  goodness,  of  God.  The  tower  of  Siloam 
falls  upon  certain  seemingly  selected  victims,  and  others  es- 
cape ;  this,  however,  does  not  go  toward  showing  that  these 
victims  were  sinners  above  other  men.  The  most  faithful  fol- 
lowers of  a  good  and  loving,  as  well  as  all-wise  and  powerful. 
Heavenly  Lord,  often  enough  have  scanty  food  and  raiment ; 
but  they  may  always  be  sure  that  He  who  notes  the  fall  of  the 
sparrow  and  clothes  the  lily  with  beauty  never  forgets  them. 
While  the  foxes  are  provided  with  holes,  and  the  birds  with 
nests,  the  Son  of  Man  has  not  where  to  lay  his  head.  Beati- 
tudes are  showered  upon  those  who,  in  the  spirit  of  unwaver- 
ing confidence  in  the  justice  and  goodness  of  God  suffer  with 
meekness  and  poverty  of  spirit,  all  manner  of  physical  and 
social  ills. 

The  Christian  conception  of  God  as  the  perfectly  just  and 
good  One  is  embodied  in  two  terms  which  appeal  to  universal 
human  experiences.  God  is  the  Father  of  mankind ;  and  God 
is  their  Redeemer.  The  evidence  that  these  conceptions  cor- 
rectly represent  to  man  the  inmost  real  nature  of  the  Divine 
moral  Being,  and  explain  the  fundamental  relations  in  which 
man,  as  himself  a  spiritual  existence  and  a  potential  but  wan- 
dering and  sinful  son,  stands  to  this  Divine  Being,  Christ  pro- 
fessed to  have  in  his  own  experience  of  sonship.  As  the  son, 
he  knew  the  Father ;  and  as  a  true  son,  God  the  Father  knew 
him.  There  was  such  a  perfect  union  between  them  that  the 
revelation  of  the  essential  truth  as  to  the  Father  became  an 
immediate  experience  of  the  Son.  What  God  is,  the  Son  of 
God  knows  by  virtue  of  his  conscious  likeness  to  God.  But 
what  is  true  preeminently  of  the  only  begotten  Son  of  the 
Heavenly  Father,  is  also  true  of  all  the  sons  of  God.  God  is 
the  Father  of  humanity ;  and  man,  being  himself  an  ethical 
spirit,  is  kindred  to  the  Divine  Ethical  Spirit,  and  may  be 
united  with  Him  and  so  become  God's  accepted  child.  It  is 
this  truth  of  Christianity,  as  says  Harnack,^ — the  belief  which 

1  History  of  Dogma,  I,  p.  180,  note  4. 


THE  MORAL  ATTRIBUTES  189 

has  been  called  "  too  good  to  be  true  " — that  the  Almighty  God 
of  creation  is  "  the  merciful  God  of  Redemption,"  which  is 
the  tacit  presupposition  of  the  Christian  declaration  about  the 
Divine  Being. 

It  cannot  be  claimed  that  the  attempts  of  the  Pauline  the- 
ology, or  of  any  subsequent  type  of  Christian  theology,  to  argue 
the  perfect  justice  and  goodness  of  God  in  consistency  with  the 
religious  consciousness  of  Christ  himself,  are  altogether  suc- 
cessful. On  the  contrary,  many  of  these  attempts  do  violence 
to  the  rising  moral  ideals  of  the  race  and  are  a  plain  descent 
from  the  lofty  attitude  of  the  Great  Teacher.  When,  for  ex- 
ample, the  Apostle  to  the  Gentiles,  after  having  announced 
(Rom.  ix)  the  tenet  that  God,  in  order  to  declare  his  name 
"  throughout  all  the  earth  "  hath  "  mercy  on  whom  he  will,  and 
whom  he  will  he  hardeneth,"  adds  the  question :  "  Nay  but,  O 
man,  who  art  thou  that  repliest  against  God  ?  "  he  may  be  un- 
derstood as  fitly  suggesting  the  limitations  of  human  knowledge 
and  insight  as  to  the  conditions  under  which  the  Divine  justice 
and  goodness  are  operating.  But  when  he  avails  himself  of  the 
truly  Oriental  but  quite  un-Christian  illustration  of  the  clay 
and  the  potter,  in  the  place  of  Jesus'  doctrine  of  the  erring  son 
and  yet  loving  Father,  he  distinctly  departs,  in  his  zeal  for  tlie 
argument,  from  the  ethical  doctrine  of  his  Master. 

Indeed,  it  is  doubtful  if  much  has  ever  been  done  bv  Chris- 
tian  theology,  as  suchy  to  make  rational  or  acceptable,  by  its 
arguments,  the  faith  of  Christ  in  the  perfect  justice  and  good- 
ness of  God.  The  direct  contributions  to  tlio  sup[)()rt  of  this 
faith,  whether  in  the  form  of  facts  or  of  a  rational  adjustment 
of  the  involved  dilliculties,  have  come  chiefly  from  Christian 
experience,  in  so  far  as  it  has  been  moulded  after  the  pattern 
of  (^hrlst.  In  a  secondary  way,  tlie  broadening  and  deepening 
by  the  positive  sciences  of  man's  knowledge  of  the  IxMieficent 
cosmic  processes  and  of  tlieir  tendencies  in  ideal  directions,  ]ux8 
thrown  light  upon  the  problem.  Rut  it  is  especially  that  calm, 
self-effacing,  and  retlective  attitude  toward  nature  and  human 


190  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

life,  which  practical  philosophy  encourages,  that  has  added  most 
to  support  the  testimony  of  religious  faith.  Hence,  as  far  as 
the  improvements  from  science  and  philosophy  have  penetrated 
Christian  theology,  they  have  chiefly  arisen  outside  of  the 
Christian  Church  itself.  In  brief,  the  experience  of  increasing 
numbers  of  the  race,  who  have  accepted  and  made  their  very 
own  the  faitli  of  religion  in  tlie  perfect  justice  and  goodness 
of  God,  and  who  have  found  proof  of  His  Fatherly  and  Re- 
deeming Love  by  living  in  the  attitude  of  filial  piety  toward 
God  has  furnished  to  the  world  the  principal  empirical  data 
upon  which  the  faith  itself  can  rely.  But  the  effective  rational- 
izing of  this  faith,  and  the  placing  of  it  upon  the  broader 
basis  of  a  cosmic  theory  that  shall  satisfy  the  requirements  of 
reflective  thinking,  had  its  origin  chiefly  in  Greek  sources. 

The  pre-Christian  Greek  philosophical  developments  were  by 
no  means  wanting  in  a  rational  confidence  in  the  perfect  Divine 
Justice  and  Goodness.  According  to  Aristotle  ^  the  love  of 
men  for  the  gods  is  like  the  love  of  dutiful  children  for  their 
parents  ;  it  is  based  upon  acknowledgment  of  their  superiority, 
and  grateful  recognition  of  the  benefits  they  have  bestowed 
upon  humanity.  The  confidence  of  Plutarch  '^  in  the  goodness 
of  God  is  such  that  he  introduces  into  his  theodicy  a  fantastic 
doctrine  of  Daemons  to  whom  this  goodness  commits  the  souls 
of  men  ;  and  each  one  of  whom  "  loves  to  help  the  soul  com- 
mitted to  its  care,  and  to  save  it  by  its  inspirations."  There 
are,  indeed,  some  men  for  whom  it  is  best  to  fear  God  ;  and  a 
greater  number  combine  fear  of  Him  with  their  honor  and  wor- 
ship. But  this  feeling  is  totally  eclipsed  by  the  hope  and  joy 
that  attend  communion  with  God.  The  best  of  the  Stoics,  also, 
represented  God  as  a  stern  but  wise  and  loving  Father,  who  ed- 
ucates men  as  good  parents  do  their  children.  God — it  is  the 
teaching  of  Seneca  ^ — does  not  keep  a  good  man  in  pleasures, 

iNicom.   Eth.,   VIII,   7. 

2  Compare  Oakesmith,  The  Religion  of  Plutarch,  chap.  VIII. 

3  De  Vita  Beata,  XV;  comp.  De  Providentia,  I,  5/.;  II,  6,  9. 


THE  MORAL  ATTRIBUTES  191 

but  tries  him,  hardens  him  and  prepares  him  for  Himself.  All 
this  is  necessary  in  order  that  man  may  '•''follow  God  "  and  be- 
come like  Him.  The  burden  of  the  teaching  of  Epictetus  ^  is 
that  we  should  continue  in  thankful  and  entire  obedience  to 
God,  being  sure  that  God  neither  hates  us,  nor  cares  for  us 
above  others :  "  He  does  not  neglect  any  even  of  the  smallest 
things."  And  ]\Iarcus  Aurelius,^  than  whom  no  more  noble 
and  truly  pious  soul  ever  lived  in  the  ancient  Roman  world, 
would  have  all  men  love  and  follow  the  good  God  and  Father 
of  all,  and  live  in  love  with  all  mankind. 

Thus  on  a  Jewish  basis,  but  by  union  with  Greek  philosophy, 
there  developed  a  conception  of  the  Divine  Being  in  his  moral 
attributes  which  was  destined  most  profoundly  to  influence 
the  thought  of  all  time.  The  view  that  the  world  of  natural 
objects  and  of  human  history  came  into  Ijeing  because  God 
willed  it  for  good  is  that  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments.  It 
is  the  goodness  of  God,  our  Father,  as  manifested  in  Nature 
and,  more  marvelously  and  unmistakably  in  human  history, 
which  impresses  the  minds  of  the  Biblical  writers,  in  spite  of 
many  pessimistic  utterances  about  the  world  as  evil,  and  as 
lying  in  the  *' wicked  one,"  etc.  But  it  was  Philo's  concep- 
tion of  which  Bousset^  declares  :  In  liis  mind  the  best  of  the 
Old-Testament  conception  had  found  a  union  with  the  Ijest  of 
the  Greek  philosophical  thinking.  Thus  fur  Philo  "  God  only 
is  the  truest  and  actual  Peace  ....  and  although  He  is  'One 
and  All,'  He  is  also  the  Good  God." 

Subse([uent  Christian  doctrine  based  upon  the  experience  of 
redemption  certain  factors  of  tlie  conception  of  the  Divine 
justice  and  goodness  which  Stoicism  and  Neo-Platonism  could 
not  in  the  same  wav  t^ike  into  their  account ;  and  which  .Tu- 
daism  had  left  in  a  state  of  arrested  development.  These  were  : 
(1)  Faith  in   the  pity  and  redeeming  love  of  (lod  ;   (2)  Hope 

1  I)Lsrours<'M,  Tnmslutiori  by  HipKinson,  I,  3,  6,  and  III,  22,  24. 
3  Thou^^htw   (Louk'h  Tninhlatioii),  VII,  31. 
5  Die  Hcligiou  dcs  Judcntunw,  p.  420. 


192  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

in  the  future  and  final  triumph  of  the  Good  ;  and  (3)  an  ac- 
tive Love  for  mankind,  which  became  a  mighty  world-force 
for  the  uplifting  of  the  race  of  men  b}^  the  self-sacrificing  and 
Christ-like  exertions  of  men  themselves.  It  continued,  never- 
theless, to  be  the  Platonizing  conception  of  God,  although  as 
modified  by  union  with  elements  from  the  Old-Testament  doc- 
trine of  Messiah  and  of  the  suffering  Servant  of  God,  which  the 
Christian  Apologists  used  in  their  efforts  at  showing  the  con- 
sistency of  the  world's  evil  with  the  justice  and  goodness  of  the 
world's  Creator  and  Lord.  Thus  Greek  philosophy  attempted 
to  make  rational  the  moral  faith  of  religion.  The  attempt  in- 
volved the  following  principal  assumptions  :  (1)  God  cannot 
be  conceived  of  as  without  reason  (<SXo7os) ;  He  is  the  full- 
ness of  reason ;  He  has  the  Logos  in  Himself.  (2)  For  the 
sake  of  creation,  which  is  motived  by  an  expressive  and  rational 
love,  God  sends  forth  the  Logos  from  himself,  the  Logos  be- 
comes hypostasized.  (3)  This  Logos  whose  essence  is  indenti- 
cal  with  God  becomes  in  this  way  distinct  from  God, — i.  e.,  has 
an  origin,  as  God  has  not.  (4)  This  Logos  becomes  incarnate 
in  Jesus ;  thus  (5)  through  his  redemptive  work  as  the  son  of 
God,  preeminent,  and  through  his  followers,  the  other  sons  of 
God,  the  race  is  to  be  won  back  to  God,  and  the  perfect  Di- 
vine justice  and  goodness  is  to  be  vindicated. 

We  have  called  the  faith  of  religion  in  the  moral  attributes 
of  God  a  "  sublime  and  sublimely  audacious "  belief.  We 
now  turn  to  certain  considerations,  lying  more  or  less  com- 
pletely outside,  by  which  this  faith  may  be  supported.  These 
considerations  are  largely  indentical  with  those  which  are  an- 
tithetic to  the  ethics  of  Hedonism.  For  it  is  difficult.  Nay !  it 
is  impossible,  to  believe  in  the  justice  and  goodness  of  God  on 
grounds  of  a  consistent  hedonistic  theory  of  morals.  On  the 
one  hand,  if  God  has  no  regard  at  all  for  human  happiness,  he 
cannot  be  conceived  of  as  displaying  moral  attributes  in  his 
dealings  with  the  race.  Every  attempt  at  a  theodicy  seems  to 
compel  the  admission ;  "  Susceptibility  to  privation  of  good 


THE  MORAL  ATTRIBUTES  11)3 

and  to  suffering  and  sorrow  is  essential  to  the  existence  of  a 
moral  sj^stem  consisting  of  finite  persons  under  a  government 
of  God."  ^  The  very  conceptions  of  justice  and  goodness  im- 
ply that  the  goods  and  evils  of  life  are  distributed  according  to 
some  plan  that,  if  completely  known,  commends  itself  in  the 
interest  of  moral  ideals.  But  if  this  Divine  ideal  is  the  hedo- 
nistic ideal,  and  if  the  supreme  good  for  man  is  happiness  and 
the  supreme  evil  is  suffering,  then  a  hopeless  and  irreconcilable 
breach  is  made  between  the  ideals  of  morals  and  the  ideals  of 
religious  faith. 

The  prior  question,  in  the  light  of  the  rational  answer  to 
which  the  Divine  Morality  must  be  vindicated,  if  vindicated 
at  all,  is,  bluntly  expressed,  just  this :  "  What  is  God  after?** 
What  is  the  end  which  the  Divine  Being  wishes  to  secure  in 
the  application  of  the  actual  cosmic  processes  to  the  race  of 
mankind  ?  But  every  answer  to  this  question  implies  a  refer- 
ence back  to  human  conceptions  of  worth.  What  kind  of 
worth  is  that,  kinship  Avith  which  God's  kindness  aims  to  se- 
cure ?  To  this  question  religion,  can  give  only  one  answer:  It 
is  kinship  with  Him,  as  the  pure  and  Holy  One  who  is  blessed 
in  being  this  and  in  suffering  that  othere  ma}^  become  like  him- 
self. To  regard  the  divine  goodness  as  caring  only,  or  cliiefly, 
for  the  divine  happiness,  or  for  the  happiness  of  those  who  are 
upon  his  side,  so  to  say,  is  to  degrade  tliis  moral  qualification. 
For  the  most  genuine  and  perfect  goodness  prizes  and  seeks 
that  which  is  most  good  ;  and  this  no  longer  appeai-s  to  be  hap- 
piness, if  once  we  have  agreed  to  tiike  the  point  of  view  of- 
fered by  subjective  religion.  In  this  respect,  tlie  ethics  of  Cliris- 
tianity  is  in  agreement  with  the  ethics  of  Stoicism. 

Moreover,  when  we  come  fairly  to  survey,  and  consistently 
to  reflect  upon,  the  actual  condition  of  the  world's  affairs, — 
whether  in  the  past,  the  i)resent,  or  the  prospective  future, 
liowever  distant — their  planful  character,  so  far  as  they  exhibit 
any  planful  character  at  all,  does  not  seem  to  agree  with   the 

>  So  Professor  Harris,  God  the  Creator  and  Lord  of  All,  I,  p.  223. 


194  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

assumption  which  makes  happiness  the  supreme  end  of  it  all. 
The  aversion  of  religion  to  a  pessimistic  estimate  of  the  final  re- 
sult of  the  cosmic  and  social  processes  cannot  be  based  upon 
a  hedonistic  view  of  the  working  of  these  processes.  On  the 
contrary,  the  chief  effective  cause  of  disbelief  in  the  perfect 
justice  and  goodness  of  God  is  wont  to  be  an  aversion  to  the 
suffering  which  is  inevitable  under  the  laws  of  his  discipline — 
physical,  ethnic,  but  especially  ethical,  in  the  larger  mean- 
ing of  this  word.  It  is  the  immorality  of  insubordination  to 
these  laws  which  religion  would  cure  by  substituting  the  spirit 
of  filial  piety,  of  trust,  hope,  and  love.  It  is  by  no  means  a 
mere,  although  a  biting  sarcasm,  when  a  Greek  writer  repre- 
sents the  advocatus  diaholi  as  "  gathering  together,  from  var- 
ious sources,  an  undigested  mass  of  confused  observations, 
and  then  scattering  them  upon  Providence  in  one  contemp- 
tuous stream  of  spleen  and  anger."  And  a  modern  writer 
strikes  the  true  note  when  he  says^ :  "  Pessimism  can  only 
establish  itself  in  the  minds  of  those  who  think  that  pleasure 
is  the  goal  of  life,  or — which  comes  to  the  same — that  life  has 
no  goal  at  all." 

When,  then,  we  take  the  higher  point  of  view  and  assume  it 
to  be  true  that  God  is  in  the  world,  redeeming  the  world  and 
securing  thus  for  mankind  the  supreme  and  all-inclusive  ideal 
good,  the  vindication  of  His  perfect  justice  and  goodness  fol- 
lows in  this  way ;  thus,  and  thus  only,  is  a  religious  theodicy 
placed  upon  its  more  unassailable  grounds.  From  this  same 
point  of  view,  in  the  absence  of  other  considerations,  it  would 
even  be  possible  to  turn  the  evidence  so  squarely  around  as  to 
make  it  attack  God's  justice  and  goodness,  on  the  other  side,  so 
to  say.  For,  then,  it  is  not  those  who,  although  being  more 
righteous  than  others,  suffer  more  than  others  in  this  life,  that 
seem  to  be  most  unjustly  treated.  For  they  have  the  larger 
share  in  the  benefits  of  the  discipline  of  suffering.  But  the 
Divine  injustice  seems  greatest  toward  those  few,  if  any  such 

1  D'Alviella,  Ibid,  p.  292. 


THE  MORAL  ATTRIBUTES  195 

there  be,  whom  He  permits  to  be  most  happy  and  prosperous, 
although  they  continue  unrighteous  and  even  prosper  by  means 
of  their  unrighteousness.  Verily,  they  have  their  reward ! 
"  Let  molten  coin  be  thy  damnation,"  says  Providence  to  the 
miser :  "  Be  thou  for  ever  drowning  in  a  butt  of  sack,"  to  the 
drunkard.^ 

There  are,  however,  not  a  few  considerations  to  which  mod- 
ern science  and  philosophy  are  most  firmly  and  intelligently 
committed,  that  assist  the  mind  in  its  desire  to  look  favorably 
upon  the  moral  optimism  of  religious  faith.  These  considera- 
tions are  chiefly  of  the  following  three  classes  :  (1)  Those 
derived  from  the  solidarity  of  the  race ;  (2)  the  enormous 
complexity  and  flexibility,  combined  with  tenacity,  which  char- 
acterize the  connections  of  humanity  witli  Nature  at  large  ; 
and  (3)  the  fact  of  an  enormously  complicated  and  indefinitely 
long  development.  Each  one  of  these  three  considerations 
will  be  seen  in  its  higher  value,  when  we  come  to  treat  critic- 
ally the  religious  doctrine  of  God's  relations  to  the  World. 
But  a  remark  upon  each  is  quite  unavoidable  at  this  point. 
If  it  is  attempted  to  take  the  individual  out  of  his  connections 
with  the  race,  it  immediately  becomes  quite  impossible  to  con- 
ceive of  what  would  be  just  or  unjust,  kind  or  unkind,  treat- 
ment of  the  individual.  How  would  Providence  manage  to 
treat  men  justly  and  benevolently  as  parents,  husbands,  friends, 
memlxirs  of  a  tribe,  citizens  of  the  nation,  or  of  tlie  world, 
without  reference  to  the  essential  character  of  these  very  rela- 
tions ?  The  parents  do,  indeed,  eat  sour  grapes,  and  tlio 
children's  teeth  are  set  on  edge.  Modern  science — physico- 
chemical,  physiological,  psychological,  and  social — is  con- 
stantly emphasizing  the  fundamental  import  and  supremo 
value  of  all  these  relations,  in  the  solidarity  of  the  one  nice. 
Tlii»  fad  of  ioUdiirity  is  the  latsic  fact  of  all  nmriil  ihrcJopment, 

^  Ov6i  yrfpdfftairti  itco\da(iy^av,  dX\'  i'lJ^pdaav  Ko\a^6tU¥Oi  ;  "Not  when  they 
hatl  Krown  oWl  were  they  piiniHhe<l,  but  they  Krew  old  in  punishment,"— 
waa  the  startling  Greek  way  of  stating  this  mystery. 


196  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

And  if  the  essential  justice  and  beneficence  of  this  fact  are 
impugned  or  disproved,  then  Divine  government  becomes  in- 
conceivable under  any  circumstances  similar  to  those  of  the 
real  world  ;  and  all  question  of  the  moral  nature  of  such  gov- 
ernment becomes  absurd.  But  if  this  solidarity  of  the  race  is 
essentially  just  and  good,  then  to  treat  individuals  in  accor- 
dance with  it  cannot  be  essentially  unjust  and  bad. 

Again,  the  modern  conception  of  Nature,  and  of  man's  place 
in  Nature,  is  such  as  to  Avarn  us  from  tampering  in  the  sup- 
posed interest  of  our  desires  for  a  speedy  realization  of  the 
divine  plan,  with  those  cosmic  processes  which  are  themselves 
to  be  considered  as  somehow  the  expressions  of  the  same  divine 
moral  attributes.  He  who  begins  finding  fault  with  God  be- 
cause He  has  not  made  a  quite  different  world,  begins  digging 
a  grave  in  which  to  bury,  if  he  can  only  make  it  wide  and 
deep  enough,  not  only  all  the  choicest  and  most  comforting  re- 
ligious beliefs,  but  the  whole  structure  of  a  rational  and  beau- 
tiful, though  mysterious  Universe.  Science  and  philosophy 
have  their  sane  endeavor  and  their  safe  limits,  not  in  trying  to 
build  a  better  world  than  God  himself  has  built,  but  in  trying 
to  understand  this  God's  world  just  as  it  has  been,  and  con- 
stantly is  being,  built.  And  religion,  leaning  on  the  arm  of 
science  and  looking  through  the  eyes  of  philosophy,  sees  the 
God  she  believes  in  and  worships,  immanent  in  the  cosmic  pro- 
cesses and  in  human  history.  A  science,  or  a  philosophy, 
which  cannot  see  this  same  God  when  religion  points  Him  out, 
is  blind  to  the  inmost  truth  as  to  the  Being  of  Nature  itself. 
From  the  scientific  point  of  view,  belief  in  the  goodness  of 
Nature's  indwelling  spiritual  Life  is  not,  indeed,  a  matter  of 
exchanging  a  few  smiles  and  greetings,  in  a  garden  of  roses  on 
a  June  morning.     Nor  is  it  wholly  true  of  the  Universe  that 

"  He  that  has  light  within  his  own  clear  breast 
May  sit  in  the  centre  and  enjoy  bright  day." 

Nor  can  all  those  who  go  through  life  as  through  a  valley  of 
death-shadow,  be  alleged  to  belong  among  men  who  "  hide  a 


THE  MORAL  ATTRIBUTES  197 

dark  soul  and  foul  thoughts."  But  the  vastness  and  intricacy 
of  the  cosmic  system,  and  the  hidden  nature  of  man's  place  in 
that  system,  arouse  thoughts  which  may  always  give  pause  to 
emotions  of  repining  and  fault-finding  against  the  perfect  justice 
and  goodness  of  its  indwelling  spiritual  Life. 

And,  finally,  in  order  to  tolerate  even  a  provisional  and  prob- 
able answer  to  the  inquiry  into  the  essential  justice  and  good- 
ness of  God,  it  is  necessary  to  view  the  history  of  humanity  as 
a  divinely  ordered  course  of  development.  Men  have  always 
been  asking  themselves  impatiently:  "What  is  the  good  of 
the  mills  of  the  gods  that  grind  so  exceedingly  slowly  ?  "  But 
their  perfection  consists  in  just  this,  that  they  do  grind  so  slowly 
and  yet  so  as  truly  to  fulfill  at  the  last  their  appointed  work. 
This  cosmic  process  of  evolution,  considered  as  an  ethico- 
rational  affair  is  itself  God's  work  in  justice  and  goodness  with 
the  human  race.  At  any  rate,  such  is  the  faith  of  religion. 
The  whole  discussion  of  God's  moral  attributes  implies,  then, 
the  realization  in  human  history  of  certain  Divine  ideas  ;  or 
else,  it  implies  nothing  of  any  sort  that  can  be  estimated  as 
either  good  or  bad  by  human  ideals  and  judgments  of  worth. 
And  here  it  is  that  the  controlling  conceptions  of  Christianity 
come  into  force.  For  with  this  religi(^n,  God's  justice  and  good- 
ness are  not  abstract  qualities,  of  interest  merely  to  an  ideal 
construction  of  an  absentee  Divinity.  They  are,  the  rather, 
evolutionary  forces  realizing  themselves  in  the  historical  growth 
of  wliat  they  mentally  represent.  The  Divine  moral  attributes 
are  seen  in  the  actual  reconciliation — slow  and  progressive — of 
man  to  God  ;  in  the  abolition  by  a  redemptive  process,  of  the 
suffering  and  sinful  condition  into  which  man  has  somehow 
fallen.  It  is  at  this  point  that  the  religions  doctrine  of  the 
future,  the  doctrine  of  destiny,  for  the  individual  and  for  the 
race,  becomes  so  impijrtant  a  part  of  <i  theodicy.  Faith  in  the 
future  triumph  of  the  principles  of  justice  and  goodness,  and 
faith  in  the  eternal  justice  and  goodness  of  God,  thus  mutually 
support  each  other. 


198  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

After  all,  however,  it  is  in  this  faith  itself — its  existence,  its 
persistence,  and  its  growth — that  its  own  most  convincing 
proofs  are  to  be  found.  Somehow  or  other,  in  spite  of  much 
evidence  to  the  contrary,  there  has  established  itself  in  human 
experience  the  comforting  and  helpful  assurance  that  the 
World-Ground,  the  Personal  Absolute,  is  a  Being  of  perfect 
justice  and  perfect  benevolence.  "  In  moments  of  philosophi- 
cal depression,"  says  a  writer  on  this  subject,  "  what  I  have 
asked  myself  is  not  whether  there  is  a  God  in  whom  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being ;  it  has  been  whether  that  mys- 
terious power  has  any  purpose,  and  specifically  any  benevolent 
purpose."     On  the  one  hand,  it  would  seem : 

"  The  evil  that  men  do  lives  after  them  ; 
The  good  is  oft  interred  with  their  bones." 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  are  confident  that  the  memory  of 
the  man  of  righteousness  and  good-will  survives  and  widens, 
while  that  of  the  wicked  decays.  And  poetical  insight  joins 
with  religious  faith  to  say  : — 

*'  My  own  hope  is,  a  sun  will  pierce 
The  thickest  cloud  earth  ever  stretched; 
That,  after  last,  returns  the  first, 
Though  a  wide  compass  round  be  fetched; 
That  what  began  best,  can't  end  worst; 
Nor  what  God  blessed  once  prove  accursed." 

This  individual  hope,  however,  religious  experience  sets  into 
reality,  only  just  so  far  as  it  becomes  the  experience  of  more 
and  more  of  the  race.  It  is  only  in  the  extension  of  this  ex- 
perience that  the  better  evidence  for  the  Divine  justice  and 
love  accumulates.  The  quite  convincing  and  perfectly  irresis- 
tible proof  of  the  perfection  of  the  moral  attributes  of  God 
will  come  only  when  the  process  of  historic  redemption  is 
actually  accomplished. 

Thus  the  argument  in  further  support  of  a  theodicy  termin- 
ates in  a  conclusion  similar  to  that  with  which  the  problem  of 


THE  MORAL  ATTRIBUTES  199 

evil  was  partially  solved ;  only  now  the  conclusion  is  lifted  to 
a  higher  and  more  extensive  point  of  view.  The  evolution  of 
the  Kingdom  of  Redemption  is  the  postulate  of  religious  ex- 
perience ;  it  carries  with  it  the  evidence  of  the  vanishing  of 
evil  and  the  vindication  of  the  perfect  justice  and  goodness 
of  God. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

HOLINESS   AND  PERFECTION  OF   GOD 

The  attribute  of  "holiness"  as  applied  to  Deity  was  origi- 
nally, and  indeed  has  been  down  to  its  later  developments, 
rather  a  ceremonial  and  priestly  or  theological,  than  a  dis- 
tinctively ethical,  conception.  On  the  human  side,  this  con- 
ception emphasizes  the  need  of  some  special  purification  in 
order  acceptably  to  approach  the  invisible  superhuman  Power 
in  which  the  worshipper  believes  ;  on  the  side  of  the  Object 
of  his  faith,  the  conception  implies  certain  qualities  which  make 
fitting,  or  even  demand,  such  purification.  Outside  of  Judaism 
and  Christianity,  however,  there  are  no  other  religions  which 
insist  in  the  same  way  upon  holiness  as  an  essential  ethical 
attribute  of  God,  or  as  a  characteristic  essential  to  the  wor- 
shipper's acceptance  with  God. 

Even  in  the  lower  stages  of  religious  development  there  are 
abundant  expressions  of  the  feehng  that  some  sort  of  purify- 
ing ceremony  or  process  is  necessary  in  order  most  acceptably 
to  worship  the  gods.  And  the  natural  complement  of  this 
feeling  is  the  belief  that  the  nature  of  the  gods  is  such  as  to 
lead  them  to  appreciate  the  purification.  Thus,  for  example, 
in  Shinto,  the  indigenous  religion  of  Japan  previous  to  the  in- 
troduction of  Buddhism  into  that  country,  the  need  of  puri- 
fication in  order  to  please  the  gods  was  an  important  tenet. 
"  If  Shinto  has  a  dogma,"  says  one  writer  (Kaburagi),  *'  it  is 
purity."  Its  emblem,  the  mirror,  is  commonly  interpreted  as 
emblematic  of  the  belief  that  the  Kami  no  Mlchi  (or  "  Way  of 
the  Gods  ")  requires  "  purity,"  in  the  one  who  wishes  to  tread 
200 


HOLINESS  AND  PERFECTION  OF  GOD  201 

it  successfully.  Its  dogmatic  exponent,  or  bible,  ("  Kojiki  ") 
lays  emphasis  on  cleanliness.  In  its  view  "pollution  was 
calamity,  defilement  was  sin,  and  physical  purity  at  least,  was 
holiness."  ^  "  Disease,  wounds,  and  death,  were  defiling ;  "  and 
the  physical  distaste  or  disgust  for  these  things  led  to  a  treat- 
ment of  women  in  childbirth,  of  the  sick  and  the  dying,  such 
as  prevails  in  India  to-day,  but  is  from  the  modern  point  of 
view  immoral  and  cruel.  The  priests  of  this  religion  purified 
themselves  by  putting  on  clean  garments  before  making  offer- 
ings or  chanting  liturgies.  But  the  purity  of  early  Shinto,  as 
of  religions  generally  in  the  same  stage  of  development,  was 
almost  exclusively  a  physical  and  ceremonial  affair.  What  the 
improved  ethico-religious  sentiment  considers  as  essential  to 
purity  was  so  wanting  tliat  as  Professor  Chamberlain  says-'  of 
the  Kojiki,  "  The  shocking  obscenity  of  word  and  act  to  which 
the  'Records  '  bear  witness  is  another  ugly  feature  which  must 
not  quite  be  passed  over  in  silence." 

In  the  religions  of  India,  too,  the  ceremonial  and  propitiatory 
value  of  at  least  the  appearance  of  purity  is  early  emphasized. 
To  appear  somewhat  *'  cleaned-up  "  gives  one  a  better  chance 
of  obtaining  favor  witli  the  gods.  The  priest  who  is  acceptable 
with  his  sacrifice  is  either  antecedently  and  officially  purified 
as  being  a  Brihman,  or  else,  in  addition,  lie  has  in  some  manner 
especially  purified  himself  for  the  occasion.  In  the  laws  and 
customs  of  Hinduism  there  is  found  the  same  crude  mixture 
of  things  really  important  from  the  moral  point  of  view,  with 
things  that  are  ethically  trivial,  but  are  considered  important  be- 
cause they  meet  the  requirements  of  the  gods,  in  order  that  men 
may  l)e  "'holy"  in  their  sight.  For  example,  Yuma's  law  in 
regard  to  tiie  horse-sucritice,  as  expounded  to  Gautama,  declares: 
— '*  The  acts  by  whicli  one  gains  bliss  hereaft(»r  are  austerities, 
purity,  truth,  woi-ship  of  parents,  and  the  liorse-sacrifiee."  The 
popular  religion  (j1  Indiii  to-day  is  an  elalx)rate  system  of  regu- 

» Coinparf!  GrifliH,  The  Keligioiw  of  Japan,  p.  81/. 
'  Kojiki,    p.    xlii. 


202  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

lations  as  to  bathings  and  anointings  and  repeating  of  formulas, 
which  are  supposed  to  render  the  worshipper  *'  holy  "  ;  but  both 
gods  and  worshippers  alike  ma}^  be  lamentably  deficient  in  even 
the  elements  of  a  true  ethical  purity.  And,  in  general,  the 
purification  of  the  religions  of  India  has  this  mark  of  inferiority 
to  that  of  the  ancient  Shinto ;  it  does  not  even  secure  physical 
cleanliness,  but  often  the  very  reverse.  But  in  Japan  the  mod- 
ern revival  of  Shinto,  and  in  India  the  higher  reflections  of 
Brahmanism,  agree  with  Christianity  in  teaching  that  purity 
of  heart,  or  rtioral  *'  holiness,"  is  necessary  in  order  to  be  accep- 
table to  God. 

Buddhism,  however,  both  in  the  doctrine  and  in  the  life  of 
its  founder,  advocated  the  essential  nature  of  purity  of  heart 
and  conduct  for  the  attainment  of  any  measure  of  real  blessed- 
ness,— of  actual  salvation.  The  traditional  parting-injunctions 
of  Gautama,  at  the  beginning  of  the  "  Book  of  the  Great  De- 
cease," are  richly  laden  with  this  thought :  "  As  long  as  the 
brethren  shall  exercise  themselves  in  the  seven-fold  higher  wis- 
dom, that  is  to  say  in  mental  activity,  search  after  truth,  energy, 
joy,  peace,  earnest  contemplation,  and  equanimity  of  mind,  so 
long  may  the  brethren  be  expected  not  to  decline  but  to  pros- 
per." These  injunctions  were  given  to  those  who  were  sup- 
posed to  have  long  passed  beyond  the  need  of  exhortation  to 
put  away  the  vulgar  sins  of  the  flesh,  such  as  indulgence  of 
the  appetites,  covetousness,  or  greed.  But  these  excellent 
practical  rules  can  have  little  or  no  bearing  upon  the  concep- 
tion we  are  now  examining,  without  such  modifications  as  al- 
most completely  reverse  some  of  the  tenets  of  earlier  Buddhism. 
To  apply  the  term  "holiness  "  to  the  Being  of  the  World,  con- 
ceived of  in  an  impersonal  or  pantheistic  way,  involves  an  ob- 
vious contradiction.  Only  personal,  self-conscious  Will  can  be 
eitlier  holy  or  unholy,  in  any  meaning  of  the  words  appropriate 
to  ethical  ideas.  "  /am  holy,"  may  be  claimed  by  the  anthro- 
pomorphic gods  of  any  religion.  "  It  is  holy,"  can  only  mean 
"  consecrated  to  some  sacred  use."     For,  as  Kuenen  truly  says  : 


HOLINESS  AND  PERFECTION  OF  GOD  203 

*'  Holy  signifies  a  relationship "  that  can  only  exist  between 
persons.  Tiierefore,  man's  strivings  after  purity,  even  in  tlie 
lowest  forms  of  their  religious  expression,  imply  the  belief  that 
there  is  some  personal  and  spiritual  power  over  man  which  de- 
mands and  appreciates  purity.  They  testify  to  man's  faith  in 
the  existence  of  an  over-Life,  not  his  own,  in  whose  estimate 
the  holiness  has  worth. 

This  truth  is  not  destroyed,  or  even  abated  by  the  undoubted 
fact  tliat  immoralities  and  unspeakable  orgies  of  cruelty  and 
lust  have  not  only  accompanied,  but  have  sometimes  been 
deemed  an  essential  part  of,  many  of  the  ceremonials  and  forms 
of  worship  in  religions  of  a  low  ethical  grade.  Examples  are 
the  cruelties  of  the  Mexican  and  Aztec  religions,  and  the 
sexual  impurities  of  the  religions  of  India,  Syria,  and  of 
ancient  Greece.  *'  It  is  not  until  a  late  period,"  says  Tiele,^ 
*'  that  the  religiously  disposed  man  strives  to  express  the  su- 
perhuman character  of  his  gods  by  ascribing  to  them  ethical 
attributes."^  The  ideal  of  the  undeveloped  belief  of  all 
religions  tends  constantly  to  the  opinion  that  the  independent 
power  of  the  gods  renders  them  under  no  obligations  them- 
selves to  keep  the  moral  laws,  with  the  enactment  and  enforce- 
ment of  wliich  over  men  tliey  are  so  mucli  concerned.  But 
this  is  the  same  etliical  fallacy  which,  in  monarchical  countries, 
condones  or  excuses  moral  excesses  in  the  rulers,  and  which 
in  republics,  allows  the  influential  and  law-making  classes 
to  commit  with  impunity  breaclies  of  the  very  laws  they  have 
themselves  enacted.  lUit  religious  development  involves 
forces  to  counteract  this  tendency.  And  as  the  moral  con- 
sciousness comes  to  demand  liigher  satisfactions,  concep- 
tions of  divine  beings  that  l)ehave    immorally  U'come    intoler- 

'  Elements  of  the  Science  of  Ucli<;ioii,  Sccoml  Scries,  p.  S9. 

2  The  idcixH  of  "holinoss"  which  primitive  man  ftttache.s  to  divine  thin^ 
lire  amply  and  vividly  iUuHtrutod  hy  Fnizer  (The  Golden  HouKh,  I,  p.  241/.; 
comp.  p.  343)  in  the  cum  of  the  reatrictionfl  and  j)rohihitions  which  the 
Flamen  Dialis  must  observe  at  Rome  in  order  to  keep  himself  "holy,"  and 
so  fit  for  his  sacred  functions. 


204  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

able.  For  the  law  Avhich  rules  over  all  the  genuine  religious 
progress  of  humanity  is  this  :  The  ideal  of  Ethics  and  the 
ideal  of  Religion  must  he  completely  united  in  the  Idea  of  God. 
God  therefore  must  be  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  in  order  to  be 
God  at  all.  The  process  of  effecting  this  complete  union  of  the 
two  ideals  is  the  most  essential  thing  about  the  growth  of  a 
rational  conception  of  Deity.  Thus  *'  holiness,"  in  a  new  and 
higher  meaning,  becomes  the  essential  moral  attribute  of  Deity, 
and  the  essential  thing  required  hy  Deity,  in  order  that  man 
may  be  acceptable  in  His  sight. 

The  greater  religions,  even  in  very  ancient  times,  have  not 
been  without  the  dawnings  of  conviction  with  regard  to  the 
importance  of  the  attribute  of  ethical  purity,  or  holiness,  in 
the  relations  between  man  and  God.  In  the  Turin  copy  of 
the  Egyptian  "  Book  of  the  Dead,"  the  deceased  is  made  to 
appear  before  the  gods,  saying  : — "  I  have  brought  you  Law, 
and  for  you  I  have  subdued  iniquity."  The  earthly  monarch 
must  be  able  to  enter  into  the  hall  of  the  Two-fold  Madt  (la 
double  justice^  or  "  Right  and  Wrong,"  or  "  heaven  and 
earth  "  [?]  with  these  words  :  "  I  am  not  a  doer  of  fraud  and 
iniquity  against  men."  Otherwise  he  cannot  be  acceptable  to 
the  holiness  enthroned  there.  We  have  already  seen  what  a 
high  degree  of  moral  purity  some  of  the  prayers  of  believers 
in  the  ancient  religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria  attribute  to 
their  gods.  So,  in  spite  of  the  inconsistency  with  its  agnostic 
or  atheistic  teachings,  the  Buddhistic  writing,  "  The  Way  of 
Purity  "  (Visuddhi-Mayya^')  virtually  motives  the  call  to  holi- 
ness among  men  by  the  conception  of  a  perfectly  pure  and 
noble  spiritual  Existence,  to  be  united  with  which  is  the  ra- 
tional goal  of  all  human  endeavor  and  the  highest  blessedness. 

It  was,  however,  in  Judaism  that  the  more  just  and  efficient 
conception  of  the  Divine  Holiness  had  its  source;  and  it  is  in 
Christianity  that  this  same  conception  reaches  its  supreme  de- 
velopment. On  the  legal  side  of  Judaism  the  conception 
1  See  Buddhism  in  Translation,  pp.  285^. 


HOLINESS  AND  PERFECTION  OF  GOD  "205 

found  expression  in  such  raptures  as  these :  "  Thy  law  is  my 
delight ;  thy  commandment  is  exceeding  broad."  '*  Thy  law 
do  I  love  :  great  peace  have  they  who  love  it."  The  con- 
clusion which  the  higher  Judaism  reached,  in  its  fullest  inter- 
pretation, from  its  loftiest  point  of  view,  enforced  the  injunc- 
tion :  "  Be  ye  holy,  for  I,  Yaliweh,  am  holy."  It  thus  prepared 
the  way  for  the  companionable  and  reassuring  example  and 
law  of  *'  tlie  religion  of  Christ "  as  expressed  in  the  striving 
to  aspire  toward  keeping  the  command  :  "  Be  ye  therefore  per- 
fect, even  as  your  Father  in  Heaven  is  perfect." 

But  in  Judaism  the  conception  of  the  Divine  Holiness  was 
no  sudden  appearance  ;  nor  was  its  development  at  any  point 
independent  of  the  developing  moral  ideals  of  the  race. 
Robertson  Smith's  statement  ^  that,  primarily,  "  lioliness  has 
nothing  to  do  with  morality  and  purity  of  life  "  is  probably 
extreme,  even  when  applied  to  the  earlier  developments  of  any 
of  the  greater  religions.  It  is  certainly  inapplicable  to  the 
lower  stages  of  the  Old-Testament  religion.^  *'  Israel  as  Yali- 
weh's  people,"  says  ^lontefiore,^  "  must  keep  itself  free  from 
uncleanness  of  every  kind,  that  the  land  may  not  be  detiled  and 
Yahweh's  name  profaned.  Sin  is  impurity."  In  the  Deuteron- 
omic  code,  to  which  Professor  Klostermann  has  given  the 
commonly  accepted  surname   of  the  "Law  of  Holiness,"  the 

1  The  Ke»igion  of  the  Semites,  p.  140/. 

2  The  adjective  customarily  employed  in  Hebrew  is  the  genitive  of  the 
notm,  tJ^Tlp.  In  the  Septuagint  and  New  Testament  it  is  47«>J(hoIy)  and  the 
noun  is  ayiuxruyrj  fhohness).  Throughout  the  Old  Testament  and  the  Old- Tes- 
tament Apocrj'pha  the  title  uniformly  means,  either  (1)  as  applied  to  God, 
"reverend,  worthy  of  veneration,"  on  account  of  his  majesty;  or  (2)  as  ap- 
plied to  things  and  men,  "set  apart  for  God," — ceremonially  clean,  or  purified 
in  heart  and  life.  In  the  New  Tcstiimcnt  the  adjective  comes  to  mean 
"purified"  or  "upright,"  in  a  more  distinctively  moral  sense  (as,  f.  g.,  the 
the  "holy"  ki.ss  of  charity).  In  a  verj-  few  ca.scs  (only  two?)  the  noun  "holi- 
ness" signifies  monil  {)urity  (1  Thcs.  iii,  13;  2  Cor.  vii,  1).  In  Romans  i,  4, 
Christ  is  said  to  have  been  declared  "the  son  of  God  with  power,  according 
to  the  .spirit  of  holiness." 

»  Origin  and  Growth  of  Religion  (Ilihljcrt  Lectures.  1S02)  p.  230. 


206  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

conception  is  more  communistic  and  social ;  the  sin  of  the 
members  of  the  religious  community  defiles  the  land.  But  in 
Ezekiel,  who  empliasizes  the  priestly  conception,  the  matter  is 
considered  in  a  more  individualistic  way.  Of  this  conception, 
*'  Be  holy,  for  I,  Yahweh,  am  holy,"  Kuenen  truly  remarks :  ^ 
"  In  these  words  the  priestly  thorah  itself  sums  up  its  concep- 
tion of  religion.  It  is  with  this  demand  that  it  comes  to  the 
whole  people  and  to  every  several  Israelite.  .  .  .  Holy  signifies 
a  relationship.  It  is  applied  to  the  person  or  thing  which  is 
consecrated  to  the  deity,  which  belongs  to  Him  and  is  set  aside 
for  His  service.  What  does  it  mean,  then,  to  be  consecrated 
to  Yahweh  ?  .  .  .  .  The  answer  reveals  the  character  of  the 
priestly  conception  of  Yahweh's  demands.  .  .  .  Holiness  is 
purity.  .  .  .  The  centre  of  gravity  for  him  (the  priest)  lies  in 
man's  attitude  toward  God,  not  in  his  social  but  in  his  personal 
life."  In  spite  of  the  limitations  which  always  cling  to  this 
priestly  conception  of  the  Divine  Holiness,  and  notwithstand- 
ing the  corruptions  which  it  is  so  difficult  to  exclude  from  it 
and  which  maintain  themselves  in  Judaism  and  in  Christianity 
down  to  the  present  day,  the  emphasis  which  it  places  upon 
personal  and  particular  relations,  of  an  essentially  ethical  char- 
acter, which  exist  between  the  individual  man  and  the  Infinite 
Spirit,  has  proved  of  inestimable  value  to  the  religious  develop- 
ment of  the  race. 

It  is  in  Christianity,  however,  that  faith  in  the  perfect  eth- 
ical purity  of  God,  and  the  belief  that  man  must  somehow  at- 
tain, in  his  measure,  the  same  sort  of  purity,  has  reached  the 
highest  development.  Thus  the  conception  of  "  holiness  "  as- 
sumes the  steadfast  and  complete  commitment  of  the  Divine 
Will  to  what  is  morally  good.  God's  Will  is  the  perfectly  pure 
and  unsoiled  Fountain,  the  flawless  Ideal  of  Morality.  This 
same  Will  revolts  against  moral  impurity  in  human  beings, 
and  it  desires  and  plans  that  they  too,  shall  be  shaped  after  its 

1  National  Religions  and  Universal  Religions  (Hibbert  Lectures,  1882), 
p.  160/. 


HOLINESS  AND  PERFECTION  OF  GOD  207 

own  ethical  likeness.  At  this  stage  God's  holiness  is  no 
longer  conceived  of  as  an  aversion  to  physical  uncleanness,  or 
to  a  lack  of  ceremonial  preparation  for  paying  due  respect  to 
his  majesty ;  and  human  morality  is  required  to  aspire  to  a 
standard  that  represents  the  perfect  Divine  ideal  of  morality. 
Since  such  ethical  purity  cannot  be  attained  by  bathings,  in- 
cantations, and  ceremonials,  but  must  be  gained  by  complet- 
ing the  inner  conquest  over  moral  defilement,  it  is  the  Holiness 
of  God  which  provides  the  means  of  man's  purification. 

It  has  already  been  sliown^  how  the  mental  reactions  which 
characterize  the  development  of  morality,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
of  religion,  on  the  otlier,  necessarily  bring  about  some  union 
of  the  two  in  a  higher  ideal  common  to  both.  This  higher 
ideal,  in  its  perfection,  is  the  attiiinment  by  man  of  an  ethical 
and  spiritual  likeness  to,  and  union  with,  God,  conceived  of  as 
perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  But,  for  the  religious  consciousness, 
holiness  is  the  essential  element,  the  very  core,  of  the  perfec- 
tion of  Divine,  moral  and  spiritual  Being.  Hence  the  con- 
sciousness of  wrongdoing  becomes  the  consciousness  of  sin  ; 
and  the  wrongdoer  regards  himself  as  oifensive  to  the  divine 
holiness  and  alienated  from  the  divine  favors. 

When,  however,  the  divine  holiness  is  conceived  of  as  a  cold, 
passionless,  and  austere,  but  perfect  moral  purit}',  the  concep- 
tion of  God  lacks  those  elements  which  win  the  heart,  encour- 
age the  hopes,  and  inspire  the  moral  life,  of  humanity.  In- 
deed, the  moral  consciousness  infallibly  judges  that  such  so- 
called  "  holiness  "  is  not  the  perfection  of  moral  and  spiritual 
Personalit}'.  Therefore  "the  religion  of  Christ,"  in  the  high- 
est degree,  and  certiiin  other  religiuns  (especially  some  of  tiio 
later  develoi)ments  of  Buddhism)  in  inferior  degree,  soften  and 
modify  the  characteristic  of  holiness  as  applied  to  (lod,  by  an 
infusion  or  saturation,  as  it  were,  of  the  feelings  of  kindness 
and  pity.  Thus  the  one  supreme  and  coniprthensivo  moral 
attribute  of  the  Divine  Being  In'oomes  his  righteous,  but  piti- 

»Vol.  I,  chap.  XIX. 


208  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ful  and  forgiving,  ethical  love.  Later  Judaism,  as  its  concep- 
tions find  expression  in  the  Old-Testament  Apocrypha,  had 
begun  to  emphasize  this  forgiving  aspect  of  the  Law,  of  the 
divine  nature,  and  of  the  way  of  salvation  for  sinful  man.  "  If 
ye  turn  yourselves  to  Him,  then  will  he  forgive  all  your  trans- 
gressions and  pardon  all  your  sins."  "  To  whom  wilt  thou  be 
merciful,  O  God,  if  not  to  those  who   call  upon  the  Lord." 

The  summons  of  Jesus  was  to  penitence  and  to  the  forsaking 
of  sin  ;  but  it  was  to  a  penitence  which  is  the  reaction  of  sor- 
row in  view  of  the  newly  discovered  self-sacrificing  Divine 
Love  ;  and  to  a  forsaking  of  sin  as  the  result  of  a  joyful  en- 
trance upon  the  life  of  communion  with  the  purifying  Divine 
Spirit.  That  this  view  of  the  purity  which  was  required  by 
the  perfect  holiness  of  God  actually  pervaded  the  early  Chris- 
tian community  to  a  commendable  extent,  their  history  does 
not  leave  us  in  doubt.  "  The  Christians,"  says  the  Apology 
of  Aristides  (c.  15)  "  know  and  believe  in  God,  the  creator  of 
heaven  and  earth,  the  God  by  whom  all  things  consist ;  ^.  6.,  in 
Him  from  whom  they  have  received  the  commandments  written 
in  their  hearts,  commandments  which  they  observe  in  faith  and 
in  expectation  of  the  world  to  come.  For  this  reason  they  do 
not  commit  adultery,  nor  practice  unchastity,  nor  bear  false 
witness,  nor  covet  that  with  which  they  are  intrusted,  or  what 
does  not  belong  to  them." 

Historical  Christianity,  considered  as  a  system  of  dogmas,  or 
as  an  ecclesiastical  organization,  or  as  a  moral  code,  has  often- 
times really  departed  from  the  true  conception  of  the  Divine 
holiness.  Its  entire  doctrine  of  sin,  and  its  dependent  doc- 
trine of  salvation,  have  too  often  been  such  as  quite  to  sacri- 
fice the  essential  justice  and  goodness  of  God  by  espousing 
some  morally  repulsive,  mechanical  view  of  the  measure  of  the 
individual's  wrongdoing,  and  of  the  primitive  reactions  of  the 
Divine  Will  against  this  wrongdoing.  Or,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  has  provoked  others  so  to  soften  and  weaken  the  element 
of  justice,  and  so  to  degrade  the  element  of  goodness,  as  to 


HOLINESS  AND  PERFECTION  OF  GOD  209 

bring  about  a  return  to  that  lower  stage  in  the  development  of 
the  conception  of  the  gods,  when  they  are  highly  regarded  for 
their  *'  companionable  "  qualities — virtually  after  the  type  of 
the  Vedic  era.  Then  it  was  that  the  gods  were  so  good  to  men, 
that  both  practiced  immoralities  together  !  Or,  yet  again,  the 
attempt  has  prevailed  to  satisfy  the  conception  of  God's  holi- 
ness by  the  j)urely  priestly  method  of  conformity  to  an  elabo- 
rate ritual ;  or  by  strict  obedience  to  ecclesiastical  decrees  and 
ordinances ;  or  by  the  practice  of  the  minute  details  of  a  life  of 
asceticism. 

It  is,  therefore,  the  faith  of  religion  in  God's  holiness  that 
alone  secures  the  kind  of  Optimism  which  is  the  peculiar 
possession  of  him  who  has  this  faith ;  and  all  other  optimism 
seems  insecure,  and  not  founded  in  reason,  when  examined 
from  the  religious  point  of  view.  For  religion  holds  that  the 
chief  good  of  human  beings  is  the  attainment  of  a  perfect 
moral  union  with  the  Divine  Being.  As  says  Kaftan': 
*'  There  is  no  chief  good  in  the  World.  If  there  is  to  be  such  a 
;^ood  it  must  be  conceived  and  sought  as  one  which  is  above 
the  world,  /.  e.  in  the  sense  of  religion — as  participation  in  a 
life  which  is  not  of  the  world,  as  participation  in  the  life  of 
God."  If,  however,  this  insufficiency  of  the  world  to  provide 
the  "  chief  good  "  is  pressed  to  such  an  extreme  as  to  create  a 
complete  antagonism  between  the  demands  of  the  Divine 
holiness  and  the  conditions  of  this  present  life,  the  effect  is  to 
render  the  conception  of  holiness  itself  too  abstract  and  prac- 
tically invalid.  Even  in  the  current  Christian  conception 
of  God  a  perfect  union  lias  by  no  means  l>een  effected  l>etwoen 
the  religious  ideal  of  a  Being  who  must  Ixi  adoretl  and  served 
in  order  to  attain  salvation  for  the  individual,  and  the  nobler 
and  more  inclusive  Ideal  of  a  Will  eternally  and  wholly  com- 
mitted to  what  is  monilly  good.* 

*  The  Truth  of  the  rhrintmn  Itrhcion  (Knglish  Translation),  II,  p.  Xib. 

'Thus  Sir  \Vm.  Ilaniilton  could  make  the  astonishing  statement  that  "a 

God  is,  indeed,  to  us  only  of  practical  interest,  inasmuch  as  he  is  the  condi- 

1  I 


210  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

As  to  proofs  of  the  perfect  Divine  Holiness,  they  do  not,  of 
course,  exist,  in  any  strict  meaning  of  the  word.  Certain 
empirical  evidences  may,  indeed,  be  appealed  to  in  support  of 
the  belief  that,  on  the  whole,  the  cosmic  and  social  forces 
which  represent  to  the  particular  sciences  what  the  philosophy 
of  religion  regards  as  the  immanent  Divine  Will,  are  on  the 
whole  contending  against  moral  impurity,  and  are  making  for 
the  gradual  moral  uplift  of  the  race.  Such  evidences  will  be 
brouofht  forward  in  connection  with  a  critical  examination  of 
the  views  of  religion  respecting  God's  relations  to  the  World. 
Certain  suggestions,  however,  may  fitly  be  presented  in  the 
present  connection. 

And,  first,  many  of  the  objections  to  this  faith  of  religion — 
by  which  we  understand,  the  perfect  commitment  of  the  Divine 
Will  to  moral  purity — are  partially,  if  not  wholly  removed,  by 
the  thought  that  God,  as  the  Moral  Ruler,  is  dealing  with  the 
race  in  the  entire  course  of  its  moral  evolution.  Among  these 
objections  some  are  being  either  lessened  or  removed  by  the 
discoveries  of  modern  science.  These  discoveries  are  con- 
stantly showing  how  the  influences  from  that  part  of  man's 
physical  and  social  environment  over  which  he  has  no  direct 
control,  tend  somewhat  steadily,  when  given  time  enough,  to 
effect  the  improvement,  by  their  discipline  and  punitive 
action,  of  his  moral  purity. 

When,  in  the  second  place,  the  history  of  man's  ethical  and 
religious  development  is  carefully  examined,  it  is  discovered 
that,  in  fact,  the  highest  forms  of  this  development  have  ac- 
tually attained   the  most  assured  and  effective  faith  in  the 

lion  of  our  immortality"  (Metaphysics,  Lecture  II,  p.  23).  And  in  his  La 
Vie  Mernelle  M.  Ernest  Naville,  according  to  Brinton,  "takes  pains  to  dis- 
tinguish that  Christianity  is  not  a  means  of  living  a  holy  life  so  much  as  one 
of  gaining  a  blessed  hereafter."  And  Brinton  himself  declares  that  "most 
of  the  recommendations  of  action  and  suffering  in  this  world  are  based  on  the 
doctrine  of  compensation  in  the  world  to  come,"  (The  Religious  Sentiment, 
p.  256/.). 


HOLINESS  AND  PERFECTION  OF  GOD  211 

perfection  of  God's  holiness.  Moreover,  this  faith  has  itself 
exercised  a  supremely  valuable  influence  over  the  efforts  of 
individual  men,  and  of  considerable  communities,  to  purify  and 
make  *'  holy,"  both  themselves  and  the  society  of  which  they 
have  been  members. 

But,  thirdly,  this  sublime  faith  itself  is,  in  some  sort,  its  own 
best  defense,  and  its  own  most  convincing  proof.  How  signifi- 
cant the  fact  that,  after  countless  centuries  of  groping  their 
way  upward,  the  race  has,  in  the  persons  of  some  at  least  of  its 
most  trustworthy  portion,  attained  to  faith  in  the  perfect  holi- 
ness of  God  !  In  practical,  as  well  as  theoretical,  dependence 
upon  this  faith,  the  religious  life  of  humanity  tends  more  and 
more  towards  an  Ideal  which  unites  within  itself  all  the  satis- 
factions of  the  moral,  gesthetical,  and  religious  demands  of  the 
mind  and  heart  of  man.  God — the  all-holy,  the  all-sublime, 
the  all-commanding  Ideal — is  One  with  the  Reality  which 
science  postulates  as  the  "  Nature,"  out  of  whose  womb  come 
all  things  and  all  souls,  and  at  whose  breasts  they  are  all  nour- 
ished. Thus  this  Nature  appears  as  not  only  in  its  essential 
content,  identical  with  the  Personal  Absolute  of  philosophy, 
but  also  with  the  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  of  religion. 

That  the  conception  of  such  an  Ideal-Real  should  be  actually 
reached  in  a  course  of  intellectual,  ethical,  aisthetical,  and  re- 
ligious development,  and  yet  no  semblance  of  a  Reality  corres- 
ponding to  this  Ideal  exist  as  its  Ground, — this  is  a  diflicult 
tiling  for  reflection  to  credit.  It  is  this  difiiculty  which,  as  we 
liave  seen,  gives  its  cogency  to  the  negative  way  of  stating  the 
so-called  ontological  argument.  The  Ideal  has  formed  itself  ; 
it  has  emerged,  in  fact,  in  the  course  of  the  world's  develoin 
ment.  This,  its  existence,  could  not  be — cannot  Ix'  made 
rational  at  leiust — unless  the  nature  of  Reality  has  called  i^ 
forth.  There  may  Ikj  no  demonstration  more  matJu'inatico^  con- 
cealed in  tliis  inference.  It  /.^  tJie  leap  from  real  experience 
to  faith  in  the  liealiti/  of  the  experienned  Ideal.  Hut  no  reality 
is  known  to  man  by  processes  of  mathematical  demonstration. 


212  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Let  us  then  call  this  process  the  postulate  of  faith  in  the  Reality 
of  its  own  Ideal. 

There  is  one  composite  virtue  which  good  men  display  in  vary- 
ing degrees  and  which  religious  faith  attributes  in  its  perfec- 
tion to  God.  This  attribute  is  Wisdom :  and  in  order  to  vin- 
dicate his  moral  completeness  and  ideal  perfection,  God  must 
be  conceived  of  as  infinitely  wise.  That  the  gods,  or  at  least 
some  of  them,  know  more  than  human  beings  and  are  shrewder 
in  the  use  of  what  they  know,  is  a  persuasion  common  to  all 
the  lower  religions.  For  example,  even  Glooskap,  the  gross 
divinity  of  the  Micmacs,  is  represented  as  so  powerful  over  the 
forces  of  nature  that  he  could  call  "  Earthquake  "  to  his  ser- 
vice and  have  him  transform  men  into  cedars  or  pines  by  plan- 
ting their  feet  in  the  ground.  But  in  another  version  of  this 
tale  Glooskap  himself,  when  he  had  converted  an  old  man  into 
a  gnarled  and  twisted  cedar  said  :  *'  I  cannot  say  how  long  you 
will  live ;  only  the  Great  Spirit  above  can  tell  that."  ^  Wisdom 
implies,  whether  in  God  or  in  man,  both  power  and  knowledge  ; 
but  it  implies  something  more  ;  for  wisdom  is  a  moral  attribute. 
This  attribute,  therefore,  embodies  the  conceptions  of  knowl- 
edge and  power  employed  in  the  interests  of  what  is  morally 
good.  Good-will  is  necessary  to  wisdom.  And  if  the  wisdom 
is  to  be  perfect,  not  only  must  the  power  and  the  knowledge 
be  perfect,  but  the  good  which  is  chosen  and  pursued  by  all 
the  means  that  the  perfect  knowledge  and  wisdom  provide, 
must  be  the  highest  and  supremely  valuable  Good.  This  good, 
the  human  mind  is  obliged  to  conceive  of  as  uniting  the  three 
recognized  forms  of  good — the  good  of  happiness,  the  good  of 
beauty,  and  the  good  of  morality — in  one  Ideal  of  all  that  has 
worth. 

The  Divine  Wisdom  is,  then,  both  a  choice  of  an  ideal  end, 
and  a  use  of  the  best  means  for  attaining  this  end.  And  if,  as 
the  faith  of  religion  affirms,  God  has  chosen  and  is  employing 
his  power  and  his  knowledge  in  the  realization  of  an  Ideal 

1  See  Algonquin  Legends  of  New  England,  by  C.  G.  Leland  (2d  ed.  1885). 


HOLINESS  AND  PERFECTION  OF  GOD  213 

"which  includes  every  form  of  good,  then  He  is  himself,  so  to 
say,  entitled  to  the  attribute  of  perfect  wisdom.  If  he  is  omnip- 
otent and  omniscient ;  God  can  be  wise  if  he  wants  to  be.  If 
he  is  also  holy,  then  he  is  also,  as  a  matter  of  course,  perfectly 
wise. 

The  ethical  and  artistic  efforts  of  man  to  improve  his  con- 
ception of  Deity  constitute  the  most  important  and  interesting 
feature  of  the  history  of  his  religious  evolution.  The  archi- 
tectonic of  tlie  gods,  however,  has  been  a  matter  of  slow  de- 
velopment. Even  now  it  is  far  enough  from  perfection ; — 
whether  one  take,  for  one's  point  of  observation,  the  ethical, 
the  sesthetical,  or  the  more  purely  practical  position.  The 
gods  of  ancient  Egypt,  for  example,  were  conceived  of  with  a 
most  excessive  naturalism,  and  as  subject  to  all  manner  of  de- 
grading limitations  and  lack  of  perfection.  They  suffer  from 
hunger,  thiret,  old  age,  disease,  fear,  and  sorrow.  Tliey 
perspire,  have  headaches,  and  bleeding  at  the  nose.  Their 
limbs  shake  ;  their  teeth  chatter  ;  they  shriek  and  howl 
with  pain ;  they  are  not  immune  as  against  either  snakes  or 
fire.  Even  the  great  gods  of  the  Egyptian  pantheon  cannot 
perfect  themselves  b}'  throwing  off  these  depressing  natural 
burdens.  But  as  man's  ideal  of  personality  and  of  personal  re- 
lations, as  viewed  from  ethical  and  icsthetical  points  of  view, 
has  improved,  he  lias  more  and  more  idealized  the  objects  of  his 
religious  belief  and  worship.  In  the  other  greater  world- 
religions,  but  preeminently  in  the  best  efforts  of  reflective 
thought  to  interpret  the  experience  which  Christianity  luis 
brought  into  the  world,  the  result  has  l)een  the  framing  of  the 
conception  of  an  Absolute  Self,  who  shall  stand  in  the  I'nity 
of  his  Being  for  the  realization  of  all  humanity's  ideals. 

There  must,  however,  be  a  complete  union  of  the  "  metaphysi- 
cal predicates  "  ami  the  *"  moral  jittribntes,"  in  order  to  fill  out 
the  conception  of  the  BiTfcction  of  the  Divine  Being.  This 
union  can  1x3  cfft'Cted — whether  in  thought  or  in  actuality  — 
only  us  it  exists  in   the  Unity  of  a  Pei'sonal    Life.       \n  answer 


214  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

to  this  demand  for  such  a  unity,  religious  faith  attempts  to 
blend  all  the  ideal  predicates  and  attributes  in  the  one  idea 
of  eternal,  omnipotent,  omnipresent,  and  omniscient.  Goodness 
personified.  In  a  word,  its  Object  is  conceived  of  as  perfect 
Ethical  Spirit.  But  in  the  mixed  scientific,  philosophical,  and 
religious  development  of  man  there  has  been  a  constant  ten- 
dency for  two  lines  of  reasoning  upon  the  data  of  experience  to 
fall  apart ;  and  so  to  prevent  or  to  impair  the  perfection  of  this 
idea.  To  state  the  case  in  a  somewhat  extreme  way  :  The  God 
of  science  and  philosophy,  and  the  popular  God,  have  been  at 
war  with  each  other.  Philosophy,  in  fidelity  to  the  data  fur- 
nished by  the  positive  sciences,  has  evolved  the  conception  of 
an  Absolute,  or  World-Ground.  In  this  conception  the  attri- 
butes of  eternity,  power,  absoluteness  as  respects  limitations  of 
time  and  space,  have  been  the  factors  which  have  claimed  the 
preeminence.  Thus  the  philosopher's  God,  even  if  he  ceases 
to  be  a  barren  abstraction  and  gains  the  title  of  "  Supreme  Be- 
ing," or  the  "Power  which  the  Universe  manifests,"  is  not  so 
personified  as  to  come  near  to  man,  to  touch  his  heart,  and  to 
influence  his  life  profoundly  on  its  ethical  and  spiritual  side. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  more  popular  conceptions  so  an- 
thropomorphize God  as  to  dissatisfy,  if  not  to  shock  and  revolt, 
the  higher  and  more  permanent  demands  of  the  scientific  and 
rational  interpretation  of  human  experience  in  its  highest,  most 
dignified,  and  noblest  developments. 

Now  neither  of  these  lines  of  human  development,  or  of  the 
conceptions  for  which  they  stand,  can  be  safely  discredited  or 
left  out  of  our  total  account.  The  "  philosopher's  God  "  can- 
not be  dismissed  from  consideration  with  an  outcry  against  its 
metaphysical  origin  and  abstract  characteristics.  It  is  a  con- 
stantly recurrent  and  permanent  force  in  the  evolution  of  the 
religious  life  of  humanity.  It  represents  the  highest  flights  of 
human  reason  in  the  attempt  to  reach  the  lofty  altitude  where 
the  atmosphere  is  so  free  from  the  mists  of  ignorance,  and  the 
dust  of  superstition  and  passion,  that  the  purged  eye  may  look 


HOLINESS  AND  PERFECTION  OF  GOD  215 

into  the  very  face  of  the  Infinite  One.  Nor  is  this  true  of  the 
mystical  speculations  of  India  or  of  later  Greece  alone.  It  is 
also  true  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  of  some  of  the  Epistles  ascribed 
to  Paul,  and  of  other  passages  in  the  New  Testament.  And 
the  history  of  the  first  four  centuries  of  Christianity  shows  how, 
on  a  basis  laid  by  Plato,  Aristotle,  and  the  Stoics,  the  Christian 
view  rose  to  a  conception  of  God,  not  only  as  the  Father  and 
Redeemer  of  men  and  the  author  of  the  form  and  qualities  of 
things,  but  as  the  very  Being,  Substance,  and  Reason,  of  the 
world  of  things  and  souls.  ''  The  cosmogony  of  Origen," 
says  Hatch, ^  "  was  a  theodicy."  And  Augustine's  "  City  of 
God  "  is  a  treatise  on  cosmology.  The  Christian  conception 
of  the  Object  of  faith  can  no  more  be  made  henceforth  to  re- 
turn to  the  alleged  simplicity  and  freedom  from  metaphysics  of 
early  (Christianity  than  can  the  existing  cosmos  be  forced  back 
into  the  mythical  egg  from  which  it  was  brought  forth. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  God  who  dwells  ever  near  the  popu- 
lar heart,  even  in  the  lower  forms  of  religious  development ; 
he  who  sits  by  the  fireside  and  guards  the  hearth,  who  pre- 
sides over  the  boundaries  of  the  fields,  and  is  tlie  guardian 
angel  of  each  newborn  child  ;  he  who  makes  the  clouds  his 
messengers  and  rides  upon  the  wings  of  the  wind  ;  he  who 
springs  to  life  before  us  in  every  fountiiin  and  whirls  by  the 
frightened  mariner  in  every  storm  ; — //^,  even  //c,  represents 
a  conception  that  cannot  be  denied  its  correlate  in  Reality. 
Tlie  liomely,  domestic  Divinity,  the  God  of  the  child  and  of 
the  lowly  in  intellect  and  life,  lie  is  no  less  a  reality  than  is 
the  philosopher's  God.  Rut  ever  must  we  reiterate  tlie  su- 
preme triumph  of  man's  religious  development :  There  is  only 
One  God  ;   lie  is  the  Alone  God. 

As  the  development  of  man  has  gone  forward,  the  greater 
religions,  and  especially  the  more  thoughtful  forms  of  Christian 
doctrine,  have  presented  in  a  more  liarmonious  union  the  dif- 
ferent factors  of  the  concreptioii  which   ap[)eal   to  the  various 

*  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  and  Usages  upon  the  Christian  Church,  p.  204. 


216  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

interests  of  humanity.  Thus  God  is  more  perfectly  known ; 
because  known  as  a  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  as  well  as  the  In- 
finite and  Absolute  One.  But  this  union  is  disturbed,  rather 
than  assisted,  when  there  arise  within  the  same  religion  two 
conceptions  of  God, — one  esoteric  and  one  popular :  and  when 
two  sets  of  doctrines  as  to  the  divine  relations  to  the  world  of 
things  and  of  selves  are  evolved.  In  its  efforts  to  perfect  the 
conception  of  Divine  Being,  Cliristian  dogma  has  centered  its 
attention  chiefly  upon  the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  sonship 
of  Christ ; — that  is,  upon  the  relations  of  God  to  man  in  those 
conditions  of  weakness,  suffering,  and  temptation,  which  are 
inseparable  from  man's  existence  in  the  world.  This  fact  has 
made  this  religion  of  inestimable  value  for  the  comfort  and  up- 
lift of  mankind.  But  when  the  doctrine  of  God's  Fatherhood, 
and  of  the  sonship  and  mediatorial  office  of  Christ,  is  taught 
so  as  to  disregard,  or  to  contradict,  the  ideals  of  Divine  Being 
which  have  been  evolved  by  the  reflective  use  of  human  rea- 
son, in  its  highest  forms  of  functioning ;  then  even  this  doc- 
trine ceases  to  represent  the  Perfection  of  God  in  the  worthiest 
and  most  effective  way.  Then  science  and  philosophy  become 
arrayed  against  Christian  dogma ;  and  the  latter  is  sternly 
called  upon  to  improve  and  to  elevate  its  conceptions.  For 
the  Reality  of  all  man's  supremest  Ideals,  as  well  as  the  pledge 
of  their  progressive  realization,  must  be  found  by  religion  in 
the  'perfection  of  the  Object  of  its  faith.  With  this  convic- 
tion agrees  the  central  philosophic  principle  of  the  confidence 
of  the  poetical  insight : — 

"  All  we  have  willed,  or  hoped,  or  dreamed  of  good  shall  exist; 
Not  its  semblance  but  itself." 

From  the  highest  point  of  view  reached  by  religious  experience 
when  reflectively  treated,  all  the  ideals  of  humanity  appear,  for 
their  origin,  ground,  and  guaranty,  to  converge  in  One  Ideal- 
Real.  This  Being  of  the  World  science  calls  by  various 
titles, — such  as  '*  Nature  "  (natura  naturans)^  or  the  one 
"  Force,"  of  which  all  the  varied  forms  of  energy  are  species 


HOLINESS  AND  PERFECTION  OF  GOD  217 

or  examples, — and  places  it  under  the  "reign  of  law,"  in  a  course 
of  evolution.  By  further  reflective  thought,  philosophy  amves 
at  the  conclusion  that  the  essential  characteristics  of  this  same 
Being  of  the  World,  or  *'  Ultimate  Reality,"  can  only  be  expressed, 
or  even  conceived  of,  in  terms  of  self-conscious  and  rational 
Personal  Life.  But  religion  has  needs  that  science  and  phi- 
losophy, apart  from  the  further  reflective  treatment  wliich  the 
latter  can  give  to  religious  experience,  taken  in  the  large,  are 
quite  unable  to  satisfy.  Through  thousands  of  years  of  grop- 
ing, and  yet  at  times  led  rapidly  forward  by  great  individual 
teachers  or  by  more  popular  movements,  humanit}^  has  attained 
the  conception  of  an  Object  for  religious  faith.  In  this,  its 
Object,  religion  finds  some  thing  much  more  than  science  and 
[)hilosophy  can  furnish,  as  respects  its  power  to  meet  the  moral, 
iestlietical,  and  religious  needs  of  human  nature.  For  to  the 
experience  of  religion,  the  Object  of  its  faith  appears  as  One, 
like  man,  an  ethical  spirit, — but  immeasurably,  and  as  yet  in- 
comprehensibly superior  to  man,  a  perfect  Ethical  Spirit. 

The  objections  to  tliis  conception  of  the  Object  of  religious 
belief  and  adoration,  which  arise  on  various  empirical  grounds, 
still  remain.  Neither  man's  physical  envinjument,  nor  his 
moral  and  spiritual  constitution,  nor  his  social  relations  thus 
far  evolved,  nor  his  demands  for  a  speculative  harmony  and 
unity  in  his  great  postulate,  completely  correspond  to  his  faitli 
in  the  Divine  Perfection.  Faith  is  troubled,  ballled,  forced 
into  conflict,  on  this  account.  But  faith  pereists ;  and,  on  the 
whole,  as  it  seems  to  us,  it  can  scarcely  l>e  denied  that  both 
science  and  philosophy  are  in  the  way  of  explaining  it  as  surely 
grounded  in  reality  ;  and  also  of  commending  it  as  practically 
worthy  and  effective,  more  and  yet  more.  The  limiUitions  of 
the  perfection  of  the  Divine  Being  are,  indeed,  no  less  apparent, 
because  tlie  world-order  is  becoming  somewhat  U'tter  known, 
and  much  more  implicitly  trusted  tlian  ever  before.  In  fact,  as 
will  jippear  when  we  come  to  consider  critically  the  relations 
of  God  to  the  world,  as  conceived  of  by  religious  faith,  there 


218  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

are  many  important  respects  in  which  modern  science  and 
philosophy  have,  so  to  say,  been  constantly  making  these  limita- 
tions more  obvious  and  difficult  to  remove.  But  the  philosophy 
of  religion  welcomes  this  discovery ;  for  it  considers  them  as 
se/f-limitations  ;  and  it  is  ready  with  a  nobler,  more  rational, 
and  morally  more  effective,  conception  of  that  Absolute  Self, 
who  in  wisdom,  love,  and  holiness,  thus  limits  himself.  For 
Absolute  Will  could  not  he  Good-Will,  were  it  not  limited  by 
a  self-imposed  deference  and  devotion  to  ethical  and  spiritual 
ideals. 

And,  finally,  our  study  of  the  faith  of  religion,  as  it  mani- 
fests itself  both  in  history  and  in  the  most  illustrious  individual 
examples,  enforces  the  conviction  that,  after  all,  this  experience 
of  faith  itself  is  its  own  most  convincing  argument.  Its  con- 
clusions are  obtainable  only  through  a  realization  of  the  re- 
deeming and  gracious  love,  and  the  perfect  holiness  of  God. 
They  come  to  the  individual  who  has  embraced  the  faith,  and 
who  is  living  according  to  the  influences  of  this  love  and  this 
holiness.  They  are  coming  to  the  race  as  the  actual  redemp- 
tive process  more  and  more  embraces,  in  the  extent  and  in  the 
perfection  of  its  operation,  the  social  constitution  and  social 
relations  of  mankind. 


PART   V 

GOD  AND  THE   WORLD 


"The  High  and  Lofty  One  that  inhahiteth  eternity,  whose  name  is  Holy." 

Isaiah. 

"Who  laid  the  foundations  of  the  earth  that  it  should  not  be  removed  forever." 

Psalmist. 

"The  ONE,  muker  of  all  that  is;  the  one,  the  only  one,  the  Maker  of  all  exis- 
tences." Hymn  to  Amon. 

"  These  are  the  works  of  the  second  and  co-operative  causes  which  God  uses  cs 
his  ministers  when  executing  the  idea  of  the  best,  as  far  as  possible."     Plato. 

"//  our  view  of  the  world  is  defective,  our  notions  of  Deity  will  not  advance 
beyond  the  mythological  stage."  Schleiermacher. 


PART  V 

GOD  AND  THE  WORLD 
CHAPTER  XXXV 

THE   THEISTIC    POSITION 

That  God  is,  and  what  God  is,  could  of  course  become 
known  to  man  only  in  and  through  the  "  world ; "  if  within 
this  latter  terra  it  be  meant  to  include  the  sum-total  of  human 
experience  with  things  and  with  aelves.  Were  it  not  for  cer- 
tain relations  existing  between  the  Infinite  Being  and  tiiese 
finite  objects,  as  known  to  man,  then  no  account  of  the  forma- 
tion in  human  thought  of  the  conception  of  this  Being  could 
liave  any  claim  to  represent,  however  imperfectly,  the  truth 
about  the  reality.  It  is,  tlierefore,  these  relations  to  which  our 
thought  is  compelled  to  appeal,  in  the  effort  to  vindicate  in 
the  light  of  modern  science  and  philosophy  the  conception 
which  religious  faith  holds  of  its  Object.  But  the  more  de- 
tailed criticism  of  the  content  of  this  faith,  witli  respect  to  the 
several  main  classes  of  these  relations,  will,  of  necessity,  al- 
ways have  the  effect  of  either  confirming  or  modifying  our 
concepti(»iis  of  God.  For  God  is  not  at  all  for  man,  except  as 
God  is  related  to  man  in  and  through  tliat  physical,  social,  ami 
spiritual  environment,  that  system  of  media,  of  which  man 
lias  experience. 

In  discussing  the  religious  doctrine  of  God  and  the  World, 
however,  we  cannot  rightfully  be  expected  to  keep  8lipi)ing 
back  into  i)oints  of  view  that  have  already  been  tnmscended. 
And  Ixisides  it  is  desirable,  as  far  as  possible,  to  avoid  even  the 
appearance  of  repetition  of  the  same  conclusions  from  some- 
what different  points  of  view.     It  will  then  facilitate  progress 


222  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

if  two  or  three  of  the  most  important  of  these  conclusions  are 
recalled  in  the  form  in  which  they  have  appeared  to  be,  if  not 
quite  demonstrated,  at  least  made  most  reasonable.  And, 
first :  For  the  religious  experience  God  does  not  appear  as 
the  "  Absolute  "  or  the  "  Infinite,"  in  the  sense  of  being  the 
Unknowable  or  the  Unrelated.  For  religion  God  is  known  as 
a  spirit, — by  the  lower  religions  in  a  variety  of  crude  and  im- 
perfect, or  even  irrational,  immoral,  and  grotesque  forms  of 
representation,  but  by  the  most  highly  developed  religious  con- 
sciousness, as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  It  no  longer,  then,  be- 
comes unmeaning  or  self-contradictory  to  inquire  into  the  rela- 
tions existing  between  this  Spirit  and  that  sum-total  of  known 
or  legitimately  inferred  finite  existences  which  we  call  the 
world.  God  and  the  World  may  be  thought  of  as  brought  into 
some  sort  of  actual  connection. 

And,  second :  In  speaking  of  the  relations  of  God  to  the 
World,  or  of  God  and  the  World,  it  is  implied  that  the  two 
terms  of  the  relation  are  not  strictly  identical.  The  problem, 
therefore,  cannot  be  approached  with  the  virtual  assumption 
that  it  makes  no  difference  with  the  truth  of  any  proposition 
concerning  their  relation,  which  of  the  two  terms  is  subject, 
and  which  predicate  of  the  proposition.  Even  the  strictest 
form  of  pantheistical  or  materialistic  theory  could  scarcely 
hold  that  it  is  a  matter  of  no  real  significance  whether  one 
says :  God  is  the  World,  or  the  World  is  God ;  God  made  the 
World,  or  the  World  made  God.  It  is  most  surely,  as  the  en- 
tire discussion  shows,  no  such  use  of  the  copula  which  leads 
Professor  Royce  to  declare,  "  The  Absolute  is  (the  italics  are 
mine)  the  whole  system  of  which  the  finite  experience  is  a 
fragment." 

But,  third,  there  are  certain  ways  of  conceiving  more  pre- 
cisely of  the  relations  of  God  to  the  cosmic  existences,  forces, 
and  processes,  which  have  already  been  transcended.  These 
ways  have  indeed  been  traversed  by  systems  of  religious  phi- 
losophy in  the  past.     They  are  of  historical  interest  to  the 


THE  THEISTIC  POSITION  223 

student  of  man's  religious  evolution.  They  are  constantly 
revived,  in  whole  or  in  part,  by  the  popular  theology  and  phi- 
losophy. But  they  are  so  foreign  to  principles  now  somewhat 
firmly  established,  and  to  thoughts  fitted  for  getting  a  signifi- 
cant grasp  upon  the  mind  of  the  age,  that  our  present  specu- 
lations need  do  no  more  than  merely  mention  them.  Among 
these  *' worn-out"  theories  of  the  divine  relation  to  the 
world  of  things  and  selves  is  the  view  which  regards  God  as 
the  maker  of  the  world  out  of  some  preexistent  and  quasi- 
independent  "  stuff  "  or  material.  There  is  scanty  need  to 
thresh  again  the  straw  of  a  religious  cosmogony  which  can 
fitly  be  ridiculed  after  the  fashion  of  the  late  Professor  Huxley ; 
or  which  resembles  the  conception  of  the  "  idiotes^''  whom  Ori- 
gen.  considered  to  be  the  only  person  capable  of  believing  that 
Elohim  plant«id  trees  in  the  garden  of  Eden  after  the  fashion  of 
the  human  gardener.  Neither  the  "carpenter  theory,"  nor 
"  the  gardener  theor}',"  of  creation  need  be  revived  for  serious 
discussion. 

Scarcely  more  tenable  from  the  modern  scientific  and  philo- 
sophical points  of  view  is  the  conception  which  would  virtually 
limit  God's  relations  to  the  world  to  an  act  of  creation  ex  nihilo 
which  launched  the  present  system  of  things  and  selves,  as  a 
viist  chaos  of  self-existent  and  self-sufficient  "stuff,"  endowed 
with  multitudinous  so-called  qualities  and  forces,  out  of  which 
"  It "  proceeded,  without  further  divine  aid,  to  develop  itself. 
And,  indeed,  the  need  which  was  once  felt  in  the  interests  of 
tliis  view — namely,  to  save  the  purity  and  sublimity  of  the 
Absolute  by  keeping  it  as  much  as  possible  away  from  immedi- 
ate contact  with  finite  creations — is  no  longer  a  dominant  mo- 
tive in  the  speculations  of  religious  philosophy. 

Not  much  superior,  or  more  worthy  of  prolonged  discussion 
for  j)re8ent-day  purposes,  are  the  older  forms  of  the  theory 
which  related  God  to  the  World  tlirough  some  process  of 
"emanation."  In  its  oldest  and  crudest  form,  this  theory 
regarded  the  gods  iis  making  the  earth  and  men  out  of  certain 


224  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

portions  of  tlieir  own  bodies.  These  divine  fragments,  or 
pieces  broken  off  from  the  divine  beings,  have  life  in  them- 
selves and  can  grow  and  produce  their  like.  Thus  the  older 
emanation  theories  united  a  certain  crude  theoiy  of  evolution 
with  the  view  which  considers  the  gods  to  be  the  makers  of  the 
Avorld.  But  a  still  more  vital  and  subtly  anthropomorphic  view 
regards  the  gods  as  the  procreators,  or  progenitors  by  sexual 
processes,  of  the  world  of  things  and  men.  In  the  coarse  lan- 
guage of  the  Kamchatkans,  their  chief  god  has  married  all 
creatures  and  become  the  common  father  of  all.  With  the  Red- 
skins of  the  North  the  Divine  Being  is  the  "  Great  Father." 
But  the  various  productive  and  protecting  divinities  of  India 
are  addressed  also  as  "  Mother."  And  all  over  the  earth,  from 
the  crude  belief  of  the  Zulus,  or  the  Navajos,  to  the  teachings 
of  some  of  the  Church  Fathers,  God's  nature  is  represented  as 
"  father-mother,"  or  "  mother-father ;"  and  so,  as  partaking  of 
both  sexes  at  one  and  the  same  time.  A  more  scientific  view 
of  evolution,  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  more  spiritual  view  of  the 
Divine  Fatherhood,  on  the  other  hand,  have  saved  us  from 
the  necessity  of  giving  further  attention  to  these  grosser  forms 
of  the  emanation  theory. 

The  attempt  at  summarizing  all  the  endless  variety  of  con- 
nections which  individual  and  finite  things  and  selves  have 
with  the  totality  of  the  Being  of  the  World,  so  as  to  express 
them  as  they  truly  and  essentially  are,  in  a  few  confessedl}^ 
figurative  terms,  is  agreed  by  all  thinkers  to  suggest  the  pro- 
f oundest  and  most  unanswerable  problems  of  speculative  philo- 
sophy. But  these  problems  are,  of  necessity,  involved  in  the 
question  :  How  can  we  more  definitively  conceive  of  the  most 
eternal  and  fundamental  relations  which  exist  between  the 
World  and  God?  In  their  answers  to  these  problems,  few 
philosophers  have  the  audacity  to  propose  formulas  that  claim 
to  be  accepted  as  perfectly  clear,  satisfactory,  and  final  defini- 
tions. Lotze,  for  example,  in  one  place,^  holds  that  the  relation 
1  Outlines  of  Metaphysics  (English  Translation),  p.  155. 


THE  THEISTIC  POSITION  225 

of  finite  selves  to  the  Absolute  is  best  expressed  by  saying  that 
they,  as  "spiritual  elements"  of  Him,  have  '''' Being-for-self;'' 
while  the  meaning  of  things  and  of  their  general  laws  of  exis- 
tence and  relation  among  themselves,  is  wholly  "  to  be  found  in 
tlieir  being  consequences  of  that  Idea  of  the  Good  "  which  is  the 
very  own  nature  of  the  Infinite  Spirit.  But  of  those  relations 
on  which  religion  fixes  its  attention,  the  same  author  else- 
where affirms:^  "  It  is  not  required  that  there  be  found  a  spec- 
ulatively unobjectionable  expression  for  that  which  is  essen- 
tially Transcendent,  but  that  we  have  figurative  expressions  to 
which  the  mind  may  attach  the  same  feelings  that  are  appro- 
priate to  the  content  of  religion."  And  yet  again,  he  concludes 
the  discussion  of  the  world's  immanence  in  God  by  affirm- 
ing :  *'  It  will  lead  directly  to  our  view  that  eveiy  single  thing 
and  event  can  only  be  thought  as  an  activity,  constant  or 
transitory,  of  the  one  Existence,  its  reality  and  substance  as 
the  mode  of  being  and  substance  of  this  one  Existence,  its 
nature  and  form  as  a  consistent  phase  in  the  unfolding  of  the 
same." 

Of  the  conclusions  which  would  seem  to  follow  in  logical  con- 
sistency from  such  theses  as  the  foregoing  it  is  not  our  purpose 
to  speak  at  length  in  the  present  connection.  But  the  two 
principal  conceptions  under  which  may  be  summed  up  tlie  real 
meaning  and  value  of  all  the  symbolical  ways  in  which  religion 
regards  the  relatiuns  of  God  and  the  World  are  the  following: 
Dependence  and  M<inife station.  The  former  is  chiefly  empha- 
sized in  tlie  religious  doctrines  of  God  as  the  Creator,  Preserver, 
and  Moral  Ruler  of  the  World.  The  latter  conception  is  chiefly 
eiiiphiLsized  in  the  doctrines  of  God  as  Moral  Ruler,  as  Provi- 
dence, and  as  th(3  Redeemer  of  the  World  ;  but  also,  in  tlie  doc- 
trines of  Revelation  and  Inspiration  as  means  of  the  Divine 
rule  and  of  redemption.  The  Workl  depends  upon  God ;  and 
the  World  manifests,  or  reveals,  God.  The  word  "  depen- 
dence"  expresses  relations  mainly  of  finite  existence  to  Infinity 

»  Outlines  of  the  Pliilosophy  of  Religion,  p.   147. 

15 


226  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Being,  of  human  feeling  and  will  to  Absolute  Will ;  but  the 
words  "manifestation"  and  "revelation"  express  chiefly  the 
relations  essential  to  religious  faith  or  knowledge.  But  just 
as  feeling  and  will  enter  into  faith,  so  does  knowledge  give 
reasonableness  to  feeling,  and  light  and  guidance  to  the  will. 
Thus  the  filial  attitude  which  is  subjective  religion,  or  true 
piety,  understands  and  accepts  as  the  guide  and  source  of 
blessedness  for  man's  life,  the  belief  that  all  which  exists,  or 
can  happen,  in  the  world  is  ceaselessly  dependent  upon  God ; 
and  that  all  which  is,  or  happens,  if  its  deej^est  and  truest  sig- 
nificance can  be  understood,  is  manifestation  of  God. 

The  theistic  conception,  which  afiirms  that  all  cosmic  exis- 
tences and  events  are  dependent  upon  God  and  are  manifesta- 
tion of  God,  becomes  a  doctrine  whose  ontological  significance 
and  practical  value  are  incorporated  into  the  very  essence  of  re- 
ligion itself.  In  obscure  but  germinal  form,  this  conception 
is  found  in  all  those  lower  forms  of  religion,  the  nature  of  which 
was  defined  as  "  man's  belief  in  the  existence  of  superhuman 
spiritual  powers,  on  his  relations  to  which  his  welfare  is  depen- 
dent, and  to  which  he  is  in  some  respects  at  least  responsible, — 
together  with  the  feelings  and  practices  which  are  naturally  and 
necessarily  connected  with  such  belief"  (Vol.  I.  p.  89).  But 
especially  does  a  reflective  and  developed  monotheism  involve 
the  elaboration  of  this  conception,  so  as  to  include  all  the  re- 
lations in  which  the  Absolute  Being  stands  toward  all  depen- 
dent and  relative  beings,  the  Infinite  toward  the  system  of  finite 
existences.  Indeed,  the  theistic  doctrine  of  God  is  essentially 
an  exposition  of  the  "  experienced  world  "  as  a  dependent  mani- 
festation of  Divine  Being.  This  doctrine  rests  upon  the  funda- 
mental assumption  that  this  experienced  world  is  God^s  World, 
Take  away  the  possibility,  and  the  right,  of  speaking  of  the 
relations  which  human  experience  explains  in  terms  of  the  two 
conceptions,  dependence  and  manifestation,  and  religion  be- 
comes dumb,  and  wholly  unable  to  explain  or  to  defend  itself. 

More  precisely,  the  entire  content  of  a  rational  faith  in  the 


THE  THEISTIC  POSITION  227 

ontological  value  of  the  divine  predicates  and  attributes  is 
little  else  than  an  interpretation  of  what  man  finds  to  be  true 
respecting  his  environment  of  things  and  of  otlier  selves,  re- 
garded as  a  dependent  manifestation  of  God.  Thus  the  dec- 
laration that  God  is  "  omnipotent "  amounts  to  the  assump- 
tion that  all  the  forms  of  cosmic  energy,  known  or  conceivable, 
must  be  regarded  as  dependent  manifestations  of  the  divine 
power.  To  say  that  God  is  "omnipresent"  signifies  that, 
everywhere  in  the  world's  space  and  time,  as  respects  phenom- 
ena observable  by  the  senses  or  causes  inferred  to  explain 
these  phenomena,  God  is  manifested,  then  and  there,  by  the 
dependence  of  the  world  on  Him.  And  he  who  intelligently 
holds  to  the  full  value  of  the  "  omniscience  "  of  God,  must  do 
so  by  interpreting  the  orderly  behavior,  the  rationality  and 
unity  of  tliis  known  complex  of  things  and  selves,  as  a  depen- 
dent manifestation  of  the  self-conscious  and  planful  mind  of  God. 
The  revelation  of  the  ethical  attributes  of  the  Divine  Being 
requires  indeed,  a  much  more  intricate  and  subtly  profound 
but  genuine  insight.  But  this  revelation,  also,  is  not  made  iu 
the  form  of  a  process  of  pure  logic,  or  of  an  intuition  unmixed 
with  the  contents  of  an  experience  with  actual  things.  The 
revelatio)i  is  an  mterpretation  of  experience. 

This,  then,  is,  essentially  considered,  what  Theism  means 
when  it  represents  the  relations  of  God  to  natural  objects  and 
to  the  race  of  men,  under  such  figures  of  speech  as  are  em- 
bodied in  the  words  Creator,  Preserver,  Moral  Ruler,  or  Father 
and  Redeemer  ;  or  in  tlie  terms  Providence,  Revelation,  In- 
spiration, etc.  But  tliese  terms  we  have  chosen — "  Depen- 
dence "  and  ''  Manifestation  " — are  themselves,  of  course,  signifi- 
cant only  as  they  express  classes  of  relations  witli  which 
man's  universal  experience  makes  him  familiar.  They  are, 
like  all  words,  essentially  anthropomorpliic  ;  and  like  all  words 
which  are  employed  to  suggest  the  more  profouml,  invisible 
and  spiritual  experiences,  their  use  Ikus  been  tnuisferred  from 
physical   things   to  self-conscious  and  personal  life.     In  this 


228  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

transference  they,  therefore,  carry  along  with  them  certain 
sensuous  limitations  which  are  derived  from  their  physical 
uses.  The  escape  from  these  limitations  is  a  progressive  affair, 
a  subject  of  development.  Thus  it  means  something  different, 
and  much  more,  for  a  reflective  monotheism  than  for  an  unre- 
flective  spiritism,  to  represent  the  relations  of  finite  beings  to 
the  invisible  spiritual  Power,  in  terms  of  a  dependent  mani- 
festation. 

Moreover,  it  must  be  confessed  that  neither  of  these  two 
words  is  exactly  fitted  to  express  in  the  best  conceivable  man- 
ner what  the  philosophy  of  Theism  means  to  teach  respec- 
ting the  true  and  ontologically  valid  relations  of  the  World  to 
God.  For  things  and  selves  are  not  in  precisely  the  same  way 
dependent  upon  the  Divine  Being ;  much  less  are  things  and 
selves  in  precisely  the  same  way,  or  to  the  same  degree,  mani- 
festations of  this  Being.  And  besides,  the  word  "  manifesta- 
tion "  is  apt  to  be  tainted  with  the  notion  of  display.  Too 
often  the  term  savors  of  the  theatrical  and  the  spasmodic. 
For  this  reason,  in  part,  religion  prefers  the  term  "  revelation." 
But  this  term  also  has  been  perverted  by  theology  and 
made  to  serve  as  the  embodiment,  either  of  distinctions  be- 
tween the  natural  and  the  supernatural  which  are  not  fortunate 
and  tenable  in  view  of  the  facts,  or  else  of  obscurities  arising 
from  the  failure  properly  to  distinguish  things  that  are,  in 
fact,  quite  distinctly  unlike. 

The  word  "  manifestation,"  as  applied  to  the  entire  relation 
between  the  divine  immanent  activity  in  the  world  and  the  de- 
velopment of  man's  religious  belief  and  practice,  also  encounters 
certain  other  difficulties  peculiar  to  itself.  These  arise  at  the 
different  points  at  which  the  various  agnostic,  materialistic,  or 
pantheistic  conceptions  regarding  this  relation,  part  company 
with  the  theistic  argument.  Such  difficulties  are  illustrated 
in  a  somewhat  startling  manner  by  all  such  tenets  as  that  which 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  proposed  as  the  basis  of  reconciliation  be- 
tween religion  and  science  :  "  The  Power  which  the  Universe 


THE  THEISTIC  POSITION  229 

manifests  to  us  is  utterly  inscrutable."  For  here  "  the  Power  " 
is  first  regarded  as  something  invisible  and  superhuman;  it  is 
superior  and  prior  to,  or  else  immanent  in,  the  Universe, — i.  e.  in 
the  experienced  system  of  interdependent  beings  and  connected 
changes,  in  the  sum-total  of  the  phenomena.  But  the  Power 
is  then  declared  to  be  '*  manifested "  in  this  Universe,  in 
this  system  as  given  to  man  in  his  actual  experience.  Now  all 
tliis  is,  indeed,  precisely  what  the  reflective  religious  conscious- 
ness maintains.  It  is  such  a  Power  in  which  religion  l^elieves  ; 
and  religion  regards  the  Universe  as  a  manifestation  of  this 
Power.  How,  then,  can  the  Power  tliat  is  inanifested  also  be 
utterly  inscrutable?  But  just  liere  is  where  Theism  refuses  to 
stop.  It  interprets  the  experienced  world  as  a  significant  and 
trustworthy  manifestation  of  a  Being  of  whom  we  may  predi- 
cate more  than  mere  power.  And  if  the  word  "  manifestation  " 
is  applicable  at  all  to  the  interpretation  of  the  relations  between 
the  One  active  Power  and  the  complex  of  plienomena  called 
the  Universe,  then  we  cannot  stop  in  the  application,  at  the 
point  of  arrest  assumed  by  the  agnosticism  of  ]\Ir.  Spencer. 
We  must  go  either  forward  or  backward  ;  we  must  be  more 
logical  and  thoroughgoing  either  in  our  denial  or  in  our  affirma- 
tion. Either  the  Universe  does  not  manifest  the  Absolute  at 
all,  or  else  it  manifests  the  Absolute  as  something  more  than 
mere  Power. 

It  Ijecomes  necessary,  then,  for  religion,  in  order  to  com- 
mend its  faith  to  science  and  to  philosophy,  that  it  should  ex- 
plain more  precisely  in  what  manner  it  employs  the  concej>- 
tions  c)f  dependence  and  of  manifestation  in  its  various  symlM)l- 
ical  ways  of  representing  the  relations  of  God  and  the  World. 
And  hero  we  are  at  once  reminded  of  the  difTerenccs  which  ex- 
ist between  the  two  interconnected  but  not  identical  fields  of  ex- 
perience in  whicli  these  relations  display  themselves.  Tlu^vare 
Nature  and  human  nature  ;  or  th(»  world  of  physical  plienomena 
and  the  Soul  of  man.  In  both  these  fields  the  primary  interest 
of  religion  is  to  support  its  own  beliefs,  to  purify  and  minister 


230  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

to  its  emotions,  and  to  nourisli  and  improve  its  practical  activ- 
ities. Religion  aims  to  interpret  the  world  so  that  God  may 
thereby  be  the  more  truthfully  apprehended  and  faithfully 
loved,  adored,  and  obeyed.  This  aim  characterizes  its  adop- 
tion and  use  of  various  figures  of  speech  in  its  effort  to  ex- 
press its  doctrine  of  the  relations  between  God  and  the  World. 
But  the  same  aim  requires  various  important  distinctions  to  be 
made  between  the  way  in  which  physical  things  and  self- 
conscious  spirits  depend  upon,  or  manifest,  the  will  and  mind 
of  God.  Thus,  while  the  theistic  position  regards  both  things 
and  finite  spirits  as  "  dependent  manifestations  "  of  the  Divine 
Being,  it  does  not  regard  both  as  manifesting  this  Being,  or  as 
existing  in  dependence  upon  this  Being,  in  the  same  way.  On 
the  contrary,  it  makes  an  important  distinction  between  the 
two.  With  religion  as  a  subjective  affair,  however,  tlie  reason 
for  the  distinction  is  chiefly  its  regard  for  tlie  feelings  of  value, 
and  for  the  practical  interests  essential  to  its  very  life  and 
growth.  But  the  philosophy  of  religion  must  critically  esti- 
mate the  distinction,  and  must  determine,  if  possible,  its  val- 
idity and  its  limitations  in  the  light  of  modern  science  and  re- 
flective thinking. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  Theism  is  most  apt  to  come  into  con- 
flict with  some  of  the  tenets  which  the  positive  sciences — es- 
pecially those  of  the  physical  order — are  maintaining  as  of  uni- 
versal applicability  and  absolute  authority.  Religion  believes 
that  the  World  is  one,  and  that  this  one  world  is  all  a  de- 
pendent manifestation  of  the  One  God.  It  designs,  without 
identifying  the  two,  to  establish  some  rational  scheme  of  the 
essential  and  permanent  relations  between  them ;  and  this 
scheme  must  be  such  as  to  secure,  as  far  as  possible,  all  the  in- 
tellectual and  moral  interests  involved.  But  the  feelings  of 
religion  are  hurt,  its  beliefs  shaken,  and  its  motives  for  practi- 
cal activity  weakened,  when  the  unity  of  the  world  is  stated  in 
terras  only  of  a  mechanism  that  embraces  in  its  all-including 
and  un relaxing  grasp,  not  only  all  physical   existences,  but 


THE  THEISTIC  POSITION  231 

the  history  and  destiny  of  the  souls  of  all  men.  Such  a  form 
of  materialism,  or  of  materialistic  pantheism,  seems  quite  as 
much  a  fell  destroyer  of  all  tlie  confidences,  hopes,  and  aspi- 
rations, of  the  religious  experience,  as  does  the  most  complete 
asrnosticism  or  dogrmatic  atheism.*  And  should  the  Mechan- 
ism  itself  be  called  divine,  this  would  not  serve  to  appease  the 
fears,  or  encourage  the  hopes,  or  fortif}'  the  faith,  of  the  believer 
in  the  verities  of  religion.  A  Power  that  manifests  itself  in 
terms  of  pure  mechanism  only  does  not  satisfy  the  convictions 
on  which  the  religious  life  of  humanity  is  based. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  and  suggestive  evidences  of  the 
present  attitude  toward  each  other,  of  theology  and  of  the  nat- 
ural and  physical  sciences,  is  the  way  in  which  both  have  come 
to  regard  that  branch  of  religious  apologetics  which  was  de- 
signed to  harmonize  their  interests,  and  which  was  formerly 
called  "  natural  theology."  The  natural  sciences  have  them- 
selves been  verging  of  late  toward  the  conclusion,  that  their 
former  conceptions  of  the  world  as  a  closed  mechanical  S3'stem 
were  quite  too  crude  and  inadequate  ;  in  order  to  fit  all  the 
phenomena,  they  must  be  largely  modified  or  wholly  abandoned. 
To  this  conclusion  the  biological  discoveries,  and  the  enor- 
mously finer  analyses, — chemical,  microscopic,  and  theoretico- 
physical — of  the  elements  of  both  organic  and  inorganic  exis- 
tences, have  forced  open  the  way.  Into  this  opening  way  there 
would  seem  to  be  a  demand  made  upon  the  philosophy  of  reli- 
gion that  it  should  boldly  and  hopefully  enter.  This  wonderful 
new  world — so  vastly  richer,  so  infinitely  more  complex  and 
mysterious  in  its  operations,  so  much  more  alive,  anil  even 
tliro'obing  with  life,  in  every  germ,  and  cell,  and  atom,  and  cor- 
puscle, th;in  was  the  world  as  known  to  science  only  a  brirf 
century  ago — is  still  none  the  h'ss,  but  all  the  more,  (lod's 
world.  (lod  has  not  l)een  driven  out  of  Nature  ;  neithfr  luus 
a  merely  mechanical  Nature  been  substituted  for  a  living  God. 
Hilt  meantime  tlieology,  frightened  and  beaten  away  from  the 
older  forms  of  its  dogmas  witli  respect  to  the  natural  and  the 


232  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

supernatural,  revelation  and  miracle,  etc.,  has  been  weakening 
its  claims  to  find  in  cosmic  existences  and  cosmic  processes  any 
evidence  of  an  immanent  Spiritual  Life.  With  this  has  come 
a  period  of  comparative  silence  about  religion's  right  to  regard 
the  world,  througliout,  as  a  dependent  manifestation  of  God. 
But  having  failed — as  was  reasonable — to  effect  a  complete 
reconciliation  on  the  agnostic  basis  of  a  confession  that  the 
Power  which  both  acknowledge  to  be  manifested  in  the  Uni- 
verse is  "  utterly  inscrutable,"  science  and  theology  have  be- 
come more  disposed,  for  the  time,  to  leave  each  other  unmo- 
lested in  their  respective  spheres  of  labor.  Hence  the  decay  of 
so-called  "  natural  theology," — and  the  conclusion  of  writers 
like  Macaulay :  "  Natural  theology  is  not  a  progressive  sci- 
ence. ...  But  neither  is  revealed  religion  of  the  nature  of  a 
progressive  science." 

No  reconciliation  of  science  and  theology  by  way  of  indif- 
ference to  each  other's  interests,  no  truce  which  follows  a  tacit 
agreement  not  to  use  each  other's  ideas  or  to  talk  in  each 
other's  terms,  can  be  of  long  endurance.  Such  an  arrange- 
ment is  in  its  very  nature  destined  to  fall  asunder  through  the 
pressure  of  forces  inherent  in  the  very  being,  and  persistent 
throughout  the  entire  history  of  this  long-standing  controversy. 
Both  science  and  religion  inevitably  lead  the  mind  toward 
the  problems  of  "  natural  theology."  To  shirk  them  is  to 
cease  to  think ; — and  this,  just  at  the  point  where  thinking 
becomes  most  imperative  and  most  fascinating.  The  problems 
are  ever  new  and  always  changing ;  the  problem  is  always  the 
same  old  and  unchanging  problem.  For  to  correlate  God  and  the 
World  is  philosophy'' s  fundamentalinquirij  and  supre?ne  interest. 

Man  gets  the  data  for  both  his  science  and  his  religion  out  of 
one  and  the  same  Cosmos,  or  "  Nature,"  in  the  most  inclusive 
meaning  of  this  word.  And  the  scientific  and  religious  de- 
velopments are  both  the  outflow  of  one  and  the  same  nature 
of  man.  These  are,  to  be  sure,  two  not  precisely  identical 
lines  of   actual   experience  ;    for  Universal   Nature   has   two 


THE  THEISTIC  POSITION  233 

sides ;  the  one  which  appeals  to  the  scientific  instincts  and 
interests,  and  the  other  which  appeals  to  the  religious  instincts 
and  interests.  It  is,  then,  in  accordance  with  the  constitution, 
both  of  the  nature  of  man  and  of  that  larger  nature  in  which 
man  "lives,  and  moves,  and  has  his  being,"  that  the  terms, 
whether  of  peace  or  of  strife,  between  science  and  theology, 
must  be  settled  by  his  own  reflective  thinking  upon  his  own 
total  experience.  In  fact,  the  natural  sciences,  whenever  free 
rein  is  given  to  reflection  upon  their  principles  and  their  con- 
clusions, inevitably  lead  up  to  theology  ;  and  theology  inevi- 
tably results  from  the  attempt  to  give  scientific  form  to  the  con- 
tent of  religious  faith  as  touching  that  Reality  which  is  revealed 
in  the  relations  and  interactions  of  finite  things  and  finite  selves. 
From  both  points  of  starting,  then,  the  experience  of  humanity 
leads  straight  on  to  the  problems  of  "  natural  theology." 
And  whenever  the  proper  stage  of  intellectual  advance  has 
been  reached  by  any  portion  of  the  human  race,  an  absorbing 
interest  of  reflective  thinking  in  the  problems  of  natural  the- 
ology is  sure  to  appear.  This  is  true  of  the  conception  of  the 
ancient  Cliinese  religious  philosophy  answering  to  T'ien  or 
Shang-Ti ;  although  this  conception  does  not  indicate,  any 
more  than  do  the  similar  conceptions  of  tlie  older  Greek  philos- 
ophy, a  distinct  separation  between  the  sensuous  and  the 
spiritual.  T'ien,  or  Heaven,  is  Shang-Ti  or  ''  Great  Ruler," 
over  both  physical  and  spiritual  things  and  relations.  It  is 
thus  the  object  of  both  scientific  and  religious  interest  and  in- 
quiry. Its  nature  is  also  a  matter  of  practical  importance  ;  for 
'*  It  "  is  represented  as  punishing  the  bad  and  rewarding  the 
good, — a  Power  that  makes  for  righteousness,  a  pliysical 
Reality,  which  is  at  the  same  time  an  Ethical  Spirit.  The 
attempts  of  the  Vedantic  philosophy,  also,  to  represent  the 
Divine  Being  in  right  relations  with  its  several  manifestations 
in  the  one  world  ran,  in  some  sort,  parallel  with  the  early  cos- 
raogonies  of   the  Greeks.     Thus  in  tlie   Hhagavadgit&*  Aruna 

»  St^c  Sacred  Hooks  of  the  Eaat,  VIII.  p.  9(3/. 


234  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

addresses  the  *'  higli-souled  One  "  as  "  first  cause,"  "  infinite 
lord  of  gods,"  "pervading  the  universe  ; "  and  also  as  "wind, 
Yama,  fire,   the  moon,   Pragapati,  and  the  great  grandsire." 

It  is,  then,  of  essential  interest  to  religious  faith  that  philos- 
opliy  should  vindicate  the  truthfulness  and  ontological  value 
of  its  rational  conviction  that  the  World  is  indeed  a  dependent 
manifestation  of  God.  On  the  one  hand,  this  postulate  affirms  : 
"  God  latent  in  nature  is  the  tacit  fundamental  postulate  of  the 
faith  which  is  the  foundation  of  natural  science."  ^  On  the 
other  hand,  the  postulate  of  religion  affirms  :  God  manifest 
in  nature  is  the  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  to  whom  humanity  looks 
up,  and  upon  whom  the  human  heart  reposes  in  confidence 
and  love.  And  what  is  true  of  the  Whole  is  true  of  every 
part  of  this  Whole.  The  "scientific  trust"  in  the  evolution 
of  the  "  universal  cosmic  order  "  is,  for  the  purpose  of  reli- 
gious belief,  elevated  into,  and  absorbed  in,  the  "  religious  trust" 
in  a  "  providential  activity  forever  at  work  throughout  the 
evolving  universe."  To  represent  the  two  forms  of  trust  as 
antithetic  and  the  two  conceptions  of  the  relations  of  God  and 
the  World  as  irreconcilably  antagonistic,  is  to  make  impossible 
a  rational  view  of  our  total  experience.  For  the  thinker  it  is 
to  expose  himself  to  the  sarcasm  which  Spinoza  directs  against 
all  those  wlio  deny  the  Divine  Immanence  in  the  World:  ''They 
suppose  that  God  is  doing  nothing,  so  long  as  nature  is  moving 
on  in  the  accustomed  order ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the 
powers  of  nature  and  natural  causes  are  idle  whenever  God  is 
acting  by  interference  with  nature.  They  imagine,  therefore, 
two  powers,  distinct  from  each  other — to  wit,  the  power  of 
God  and  the  power  of  natural  things.  .  .  .  But  what  they 
mean  by  nature^  and  what  by  God^  they  know  not." 

This  theistic  position,  which  regards  the  cosmic  existences 
and  processes — ^The  World,  or  Nature  taken  in  a  larger  sense 
— as  a  dependent  manifestation  of  God,  is  either  wholly  nega- 
tived or  largely  invalidated  by  various  scientific  and  philosoph- 
i  So  Fraser,  Philosophy  of  Theism,  p.  137. 


THE  THEISTIC  POSITION  235 

ical  theories.  So  different  are  the  points  of  view  held  by 
these  theories,  and  so  almost  imperceptible  the  various  diver- 
gencies upon  minor  considerations  under  the  one  great  prob- 
lem, that  any  rigid  classification  could  not  be  made  to  fit  the 
facts.  Different  degrees  of  agnosticism,  for  example,  with  its 
accompaniment  of  different  forms  of  positivism,  reach  upward 
through  one  sort  of  materialism  to  a  kind  of  Deism ;  and 
through  another  sort  of  materialism,  they  terminate  in  a  more 
or  less  spiritual  Pantheism.  Thus  it  comes  about  that  the  ap- 
plication of  the  general  theistic  tenet  to  the  satisfaction  of 
those  religious  beliefs  and  practical  activities  which  respond 
to  the  doctrines  of  creation,  preservation,  moral  government, 
providence,  and  redemption  through  revelation  and  inspiration, 
finds  itself  at  times  traveling  along  the  borders  of  deistical 
and  pantheistic  tenets,  and  coming  so  near  to  them  that  it  is 
easy  to  clasp  hands  and  journey  together  for  a  certain  distance 
in  a  common  direction.  But  names  should  count  for  little 
here.  And  lie  who  accepts  the  view  of  Theism  in  its  integrity, 
and  carries  it  out  with  consistency,  must  be  prepared  to  be 
called  a  variety  of  names,  however  inconsistent,  or  even  anti- 
thetic, those  names  may  really  be.  The  main  positions  which 
lie  is  obliged  either  tiicitly  to  reject  or  openly  to  antiigonize 
are  of  two  kinds.  One  of  these  is  Atheism  as  a  virtual  denial 
that  the  World  is  any  sort  of  a  manifestation  of  God.  The 
other  is  Pantheism  as  a  virtual  denial  of  the  theistic  position, 
by  an  identification  of  the  World  with  God.  But  l)oth  the 
thijistic  and  the  pantheistic  view  of  tlie  relations  of  the  World 
and  God  may  involve  a  conception  which  is  essentially  materi- 
alistic, because  it  regards  the  sum-totiil  of  cosmic  existences 
and  cosmic  processes  as  self-explanatory  in  tonus  of  the  physi- 
cal and  natural  s(uences ; — and  so  '^without  (iod."  HtTe 
again,  however,  the  necessity  for  furtluT  I'xamination  and  defi- 
nition begins.  For  before  one  can  explain  ex|)erience  either 
"without  nature  "  or  "witliout  God,"  one  must  know  what 
one  "  means  by  nature^  and  what  by  (iod." 


236  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

The  positions  which  it  is  necessary  to  review  in  a  preliminary 
and  somewhat  polemical  way,  before  undertaking  the  detailed 
examination  of  the  theistic  view,  may,  therefore,  be  classified 
under  two  heads  :  They  are,  as  to  the  relations  of  God  and  the 
World,  (1)  atheistic  denial,  and  (2)  pantheistic  identification. 
With  one  of  these  two  positions  a  philosophical  Theism  is 
compelled  to  enter  upon  a  life-and-death  struggle.  With  the 
other,  its  first  effort  is  to  come  to  an  understanding ;  and  in 
this  effort  further  definition  of  terms  and  mutual  exchange  of 
explanations  serves,  not  infrequently,  to  mitigate,  and  even 
largely  to  abolish,  the  spirit  of  strife.  For  the  theistic  position 
with  reference  to  the  relations  of  God  and  finite  beings  is  taken 
in  the  interests  of  securing  a  rational  faith  in  the  Object  of 
religion  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit ;  and  of  supporting  and  en- 
couraging that  life  of  filial  piety  on  man's  part  in  which  sub- 
jective religion  essentially  consists.  For  the  accomplishment 
of  this  end,  our  reflective  thinking  finds  it  quite  as  necessary 
to  maintain  the  Divine  immanence  in  the  World,  as  the  Divine 
transcendency  of  the  World  ; — quite  as  important  to  realize  in 
practical  ways  the  union  of  man  with  God,  as  to  emphasize  his 
separation  and  his  need  of  redemption  in  order  to  effect  this 
union.  In  the  effort  to  accomplish  this  reconcilement,  the 
student  of  the  philosophy  of  religion  cannot  afford  to  be 
frightened  by  words. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 

ATHEISM  AND  PANTHEISM 

Of  logically  consistent  and  dogmatic  denial  of  the  reality  of 
some  Being  corresponding,  in  part  at  least,  to  the  theistic  con- 
ception of  God,  there  is  little  or  none  to  be  found  in  evidence 
at  the  present  time.  In  view  of  this  fact  it  is  even  customary 
to  say  that,  strictly  speaking,  Atheism  has  no  advocates  left 
among  the  classes  given  to  scientific  culture  or  philosophical 
reflection.  But  of  A-theistic  views  respecting  the  relations  be- 
tween the  Ultimate  Reality  and  the  world  of  things  and  selves 
as  known  in  human  experience,  there  is  now  an  unusual  abun- 
dance of  intelligent,  sincere,  and  skillful  advocates.  A  philoso- 
phy of  religion  which  thinks  to  show  how  Theism  is  tenable  in 
the  light  of  modern  science  and  reflective  thinking  cannot, 
therefore,  afford  to  pass  by  in  silence  the  virtual  denials  of  its 
point  of  view  and  of  its  conclusions.  And  while  these  antithetic 
positions  may  perhaps  ])est  1x3  quietl}^  displaced  or  transcended, 
a.s  the  different  doctrines  of  religion  regarding  God's  relations 
to  the  World  are  critically  examined,  a  brief  survey  of  them 
is  in  place  here. 

Atheistic  denial  of  the  truth  that  the  World  is,  in  reality,  a 
dependent  manifestation  of  (iod,  may  tiike  either  the  form  of 
a  cerUiin  kind  of  Agnosticism  or  of  a  cerUiin  kind  of  Material- 
ism. In  speaking  of  the  agnostic  denial  of  the  theistic  j)osition 
in  this  connection,  the  term  "  agnosticism  "  must  be  employed 
in  a  qualifi('(l  wav.  Of  ai*solute  and  logically  consistent  agnos- 
ticism the  philosophy  of  rclii^Mon  can,  of  coui-se,  take  no  account 
wliatever.      lUs  conflict  with  this  form  of  negation  must  begin, 


238  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

and  end,  before  philosophy  can  establish  its  right  to  deal  with 
the  theistic  problem.  And  in  the  possession  and  exercise  of 
its  right,  this  branch  of  philosophy  has  no  particular  advantage 
or  disadvantage.  For  the  denial  of  thorough-going  agnosticism 
goes  to  the  extent  of  holding  that  neither  science,  nor  philoso- 
phy, nor  religious  faith,  can  achieve  any  knowledge  of  reality, 
— least  of  all,  any  defensible  and  systematic  knowledge  of  so- 
called  "  Ultimate  Reality."  The  agnosticism  of  which  we  are 
now  speaking,  however,  admits  that  the  world,  as  somewhat 
more  than  can  properly  be  meant  by  "  appearance  "  or  "  phe- 
nomena," really  is,  and  even  that  we  may  know  something 
true  about  what  it  really  is.  Indeed,  many  of  the  agnostics  of 
this  stamp  proclaim  with  confidence  elaborate  systems  of  a 
high-and-dry  metaphysical  sort,  touching  what  science  most  as- 
suredly knows  as  to  the  constitution  and  the  history  of  a  "  really 
real "  world,  both  of  things  and  of  selves.  On  the  otlier  hand, 
it  is  claimed  that  neither  through  science,  nor  in  any  other 
way,  can  man  reach  the  knowledge  of  how  God,  if  there  be  any 
God,  stands  related  to  the  world. 

Curiously  enough,  this  agnostic  denial  of  the  position  of 
Theism,  has  frequently  been  advocated  in  the  supposed  inter- 
ests of  religious  faith,  as  well  as  of  scientific  certitude.  This 
fact  is  stated  in  somewhat  startling  language  by  Professor 
Flint :  ^  "  The  two  forms  of  agnosticism  which  directly  refer 
to  God  and  religion  are  the  theistic  and  an ti theistic,  the  re- 
ligious and  anti-religious."  Both  deny  that  through  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  world's  existences,  forces,  and  laws,  regarded  as  a 
dependent  manifestation  of  God,  man  can  reach  any  science  or 
rational  justification  of  the  contents  of  religious  faith.  But 
the  one  affirms,  and  the  other  denies,  the  trustworthiness  and 
ontological  value  of  this  faith  itself.  The  one  would  substitute 
faith  for  all  attempts  at  science, — accepting  the  content  of  faith 
on  authority,  or  by  way  of  influence  from  unreasoned  feeling 
or  from  valuable  practical  interest.     The  other  form  of  agnos- 

1  Agnosticism,  p.  423. 


ATHEISM  AND  PANTHEISM  239 

ticism  would  reject  religious  faith,  because  it  finds  no  scientifi- 
cally defensible  content  in  this  faith ;  it  would  refuse,  in  the 
name  of  science,  to  be  influenced  b}"  religious  feeling  or  by  the 
practical  interests  of  religion,  in  the  pursuit  of  scientific  truth. 
Both  forms  of  agnosticism  exist  to-day,  largel}' as  the  historical 
results  of  that  natural  and  inevitable  reaction  asrainst  the 
excessive  dogmatism  of  the  metaphysical  theology  current  in 
the  Mediaeval  and  post-Reformation  eras,  which  came  to  its 
masterpiece  of  constructive  thinking  in  the  Kantian  criticism ; 
and  which  has  been  disintegrating  this  theology  ever  since  the 
time  of  Kant. 

The  arguments  against  agnosticism,  whether  "  religious  "  or 
"  anti-religious,"  are  no  other  than  all  those  considerations, 
both  of  an  historical  and  of  a  psychological  and  philosophical 
sort,  upon  wliicli  the  philosophy  of  religion  relies  in  rendering 
its  account  of  the  ways  in  which  God  has  actually  been  mani- 
fested to  the  religious  consciousness  of  man.  In  a  word,  the 
complete  argument  is  the  total  religious  experience  of  tlie  race. 
This  experience  is  an  actual  making  of  God  known,  in  and 
through  the  world  of  things  and  selves  ;  tliis  is  what  the  ex- 
perience definitively  and  essentially  is.  And  the  larger  and  the 
richer  tliis  ever  expanding  and  growing  experience  becomes, 
the  greater  and  surer  is  that  knowledge  of  God  wliich  is  mani- 
fested in  and  through  the  world.  To  treat  this  race-experience 
in  agnostic  fashion  is  to  do  it  an  indignity  ;  it  is  also  to  do  an 
injustice  and  a  miscliief  to  the  reason  of  the  agnostic  himself. 
There  is  no  higher  knowledge  for  man  than  that  which  comes 
in  just  this  way.  The  knowledge  of  the  divine  relations  to 
the  world  of  things  and  of  souls,  like  all  other  knowledge,  is 
no  outgrowth  of  abstract  reasoning  alone  ;  it  depends  upon 
the  careful  observation  and  skillful  interpretation  of  actual 
life  in  its  environment  of  reality.  Neither  the  faiths  of  religion 
nor  the  faiths  of  science  spring  uj)  and  grow  in  the  soul  of  man, 
cut  off  from  its  physical  and  social  environment.  Moreover, 
the  fact  that  the  influence  of  ethical  and  jcsthetical  feelings  and 


240  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ideals  is  so  powerful,  not  only  in  urging,  but  also  in  the  justi- 
fication and  defence  of  the  faith  of  religion,  is  no  reason  for 
assuming  the  agnostic  position  toward  this  faith.  This  fact, 
indeed,  constitutes  a  valid  reason  for  the  opposite  attitude  of 
mind. 

It  is  well  at  this  point  to  refer  again  ^  to  the  conception  of 
religious  faith  which  is  implied  in  the  theistic  position  as  anti- 
thetic to  the  agnostic  and  atheistic  denial.  "  Faith^^  in  order 
to  be  anything  more  than  vague  feeling  or  untrustworthy  cre- 
dulity,— in  order,  that  is,  to  be  faith  for  beings  that  reason  and 
that  find  themselves  in  a  world  which  may  be  known,  in  part 
at  least,  as  a  rational  affair,  must  have  some  content  of  truth 
in  charge.  "  Having  a  content  of  truth  "  implies  a  source  of 
the  particular  faith,  which  must  be  sought  somewhere  in  the 
experience  of  a  rational  being,  and  which  must  be  established 
by  some  sort  of  rational  judgments.  Only  reason  can  issue, 
and  only  reason  can  receive,  a  "  content  of  truth."  Now  with 
the  greater  world-religions,  and  especially  with  Christianity, 
the  very  claim  to  be  worthy  of  universal  acceptance  is  an  ap- 
peal to  the  court  of  human  reason  as  a  judge  of  the  content 
of  truth  held  by  their  faith.  With  all  such  religions  a  "  rea- 
soned faith  "  is  the  only  kind  of  faith  which  can  abide. 

Religions  which  make  a  claim  to  universality  are,  therefore, 
constantly  called  upon  to  adjust  their  beliefs  to  the  truths  which 
have  become  established  in  the  name  of  science  and  philosophy. 
But  the  postulate  of  every  science,  which  is  not  flippantly  ag- 
nostic, is  that  it  furnishes  an  essentially  true,  though  very  par- 
tial and  limited,  knowledge  of  the  real  existences,  and  actual  re- 
lations and  changes,  of  the  World ;  and  the  postulate  of  religious 
faith  is  that  this  World  is  God's  World,  is  a  dependent  manifes- 
tation— though  as  yet  a  very  partial  and  limited  manifestation — 
of  the  real  Being  of  God.  However,  the  world  of  science,  and 
the  world  of  religion,  is  one  and  the  same  World.  For  science 
to  deny  the  truth  of  religion,  as  given  in  the  content  of  its  faith, 

iComp.  Vol.  I,  p.  493/. 


ATHEISM  AND  PANTHEISM  241 

is  to  rule  out  one  most  important  aspect  of  human  experience 
that  is  contributory  to  a  knowledge  of  the  essential  nature  of 
things  and  of  selves.  And  for  religion  to  deny  tlie  truth  of  sci- 
ence is,  so  far  fortli,  to  be  unfaithful  to  the  fundamental  postu- 
late of  religion,  which  is  that  this  essential  nature  of  things 
and  of  selves  is  a  dependent  manifestation  of  God.  The  one 
form  of  denial  mutilates  man's  experience ;  the  other  narrows 
and  debases  the  conception  of  God.  In  both  science  and  reli- 
gion, faith  and  reason,  reasoned  faith  and  fidelity  to  the  in- 
sights and  ideas  of  value  which  are  an  essential  part  of  reason, 
go  hand  in  hand. 

The  religious  experience  of  humanity  demands  an  attempt 
to  form  a  rational  system  of  the  relations  existing  between  the 
Divine  Being  and  the  World  as  a  dependent  manifestation  of 
this  Being.  The  complete  theoretical  refutation  of  the  essen- 
tially negative  position  toward  this  attempt — whether  "  reli- 
gious "  or  "  anti-religious  "  agnosticism — requires  from  its  advo- 
cates a  thorougli  readjustment  of  their  opinions  on  the  most 
fundamental  problems  of  philosoph}-,  both  epistemological  and 
metaphysical.  The  theory  of  knowledge  lield  by  agnostic 
atheism  is  uniformly  one-sided  and  partial.  In  its  current 
form,  its  roots  lie  in  the  soil  of  the  negative  results  of  the  Kant- 
ian criticism.  But  tlie  most  importiint  outcome  of  this  criti- 
cism, in  the  view  of  its  author,  was  tlie  conclusion  that,  while 
the  knowledge  of  the  World  as  an  independent  reality  is  no  less 
impossible  than  is  the  knowledge  of  God  as  the  Absolute,  man 
does  attain,  through  the  immediately  given  and  indubitable 
datum  (jf  the  moral  law,  a  rational  faith  in  the  realities  of  morals 
and  religion  which  transcends  the  irremovable  limits  fixed  for 
the  physical  and  natural  sciences.  In  a  word,  b}'  the  aid  of 
etliico-religious  reason  the  mind  escapes  the  bounds  set  to  its 
knowledge  of  the  world  by  use  of  intellect  and  speculative 
reason.  Faith  thus  reaches  knowledge  of  the  Ultimate  Reality; 
while  science  can  only  arrange  in  logical  but  ''objective"  con- 
nections the  otherwise  disparate  elements  of  phenomenal  reality. 

IG 


242  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

But  a  truer  than  the  Kantian  theory  of  knowledge  shows  us 
that  the  fundamental  postulates,  permanent  convictions,  and 
supreme  conclusions,  of  both  science  and  religion  are  essentially 
equal,  so  far  as  their  claim  to  represent  truthfully  the  real 
Being  of  the  World  is  concerned.  All  human  knowledge  is, 
indeed,  "anthropomorphic,"  partial,  subject  to  admixture  of 
error,  and  an  affair  of  development ;  but  the  completer  systema- 
tizing of  its  various  elements  in  the  cognitive  evolution  of  the 
race  cannot  safely  neglect  any  of  the  permanent  aspects  of  hu- 
man experience,  whether  these  aspects  seem  at  first  most  prop- 
erly to  be  arranged  under  the  title  of  *'  science  "  or  under  the 
title  of  "  religion  "  ;  or  whether — which  is  most  often  the  case 
— they  admit  of  being  regarded  from  both  the  scientific  and  the 
religious  points  of  view.^ 

It  follows,  in  logical  consistency,  that  before  this  kind  of 
atheistic  denial  of  the  possibility  that  the  world  should  reveal 
the  true  Being  of  God,  religious  faith  does  not  stand  or  fall 
alone.  If  its  assault  upon  the  position  of  Theism  is  success- 
ful, all  claim  to  what  men  universally  understand  by  knowl- 
edge falls  into  ruin.  Knowledge  so-called — whether  scientific 
or  religious,  and  whether  or  not  its  character  inclines  us  to 
speak  of  its  constituents  as  properly  called  only  a  *'  reason- 
able belief  " — becomes  a  merely  logical  co-ordination  of  phe- 
nomena. It  tells,  neither  to  the  scientific  observer  nor  to  the 
religious  believer,  anything  whatever  about  the  real  Being  of 
the  World. 

The  other  form  of  atheistic  denial  which  Theism  encounters 
at  the  present  time  is  still,  in  spite  of  all  protests,  most  prop- 
erly to  be  denominated  "  materialistic  ;  "  and  this,  even  if  it 
falls  short  of  a  systematic  and  self -consistent  Materialism. 
This  position  has  so  far  transcended  that  of  a  positive  agnosti- 
cism as  to  affirm  a  certain  knowledge  of  what  the  world,  as  a 
vast  complex  of  interrelated  things  and  selves,  essentially  is. 

1  For  the  elaboration  of  these  positions,  see  the  author's  Philosophy  of 
Knowledge  (passim). 


ATHEISM  AND  PANTHEISM  243 

It  is  ;  but  It  needs  no  God  to  explain  what  It  is.  This  com- 
plex of  cosmic  existences  and  events,  as  it  is  given  to  man  in 
experience,  is  self-explicable ;  it  requires  no  postulate  of  a 
Being  on  whose  Will  it  is  dependent,  or  whose  self-conscious 
Life  it  reveals  through  the  evidences  of  a  teleology  immanent 
in  it.  And  if  one  asks  for  some  term  under  which  one  may 
most  conveniently  summarize  the  essential  characteristics  of 
such  a  world,  one  is  invited  to  discard  all  words  that  sound 
like  echoes  from  the  conception  of  Selfhood ;  and  to  substitute 
for  them  such  words  as  ''  Nature,"  or  *'  Mechanism,"  or  the 
like.  For  atheism  in  this  form  the  AVorld  is  simply  a  self- 
contained,  closed,  and  in  itself  complete  Mechanism. 

It  is  easy  to  show,  however,  that  the  conception  of  "  Mechan- 
ism "  is  quite  as  anthropomorphic  as  the  crudest  conception  of 
Deity  ;  it  is  also  much  more  meagre  in  content,  and  mucli 
less  effective  as  a  summary  of  our  total  experience  than  is  the 
most  refined  and  philosophical,  as  well  as  deeply  religious,  con- 
ception of  God.  The  monstrous  character  of  the  proposal  to 
regard  the  whole  system  (?)  of  tilings  and  selves  as  mere  mechan- 
ism, can  only  be  estimated  when  the  mind  has  forced  itself  to 
think  the  proposal  through,  without  swerving  a  hair's  breadth 
from  the  strictest  logical  fidelit}^  to  its  theory.  Then  one  comes 
to  sympatliize  warmly  with  the  declaration  of  Voltaire :  "  One 
must  have  lost  all  sound  human  understanding  to  believe  that 
tlie  mere  movement  of  matter  is  sufficient  to  call  into  existence 
feeling  and  thinking  beings."  The  more  modern  form  of  this 
theory,  however,  cannot  be  dismissed  in  any  such  off-liand 
manner  as  that  employed  by  the  French  thinker.  For  its  con- 
ception of  "  matter,"  and  oi  "  the  movement  of  matter,"  is  by 
no  means  the  same  as  that  wiiich  prevailed  in  Voltiiire's  time. 
What  needs  to  be  shown,  therefore,  is  precisely  this:  Just  a% 
far  as  the  conception  of  Mechanhm  is  modified  and  extended  so 
as  to  serve  the  hettt-r  as  a  print*iple  vndcr  which  to  arrange  our 
total  rrperience^  just  so  far  is  it  made  to  include  more  of  the  very 
elements  which  Ic/itiinaftlt/  constitute  the  conception  of  God.      In 


244  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

a  word  consistent  Materialism  turns  out  to  he  incipient  Spiritual- 
ism. Atheism  inevitably  uses  veiled  terms,  and  misinterpre- 
ted figures  of  speech,  to  precisely  the  same  extent  to  which  it 
succeeds  at  all  in  presenting  a  tenable  conception  of  the  Being 
of  the  World.  The  truth  of  this  statement  is  made  perfectly 
clear  by  a  critical  examination  of  the  assumptions  which  are 
absolutely  essential  to  the  conception  of  Mechanism  as  an  ex- 
planatory Principle. 

Any  complete  and  consistent  conception  of  mechanism  must 
begin  with  the  assumption  of  an  infinitely  great  number  of 
elements,  distributed  in  no  planful  way  in  a  self-existent  space, 
and  having  an  enormously  complex  endowment  of  capacities, 
or  inherent  selective  forces,  which  fit  them  for  the  inconceiv- 
ably intricate  actions  and  reactions  that  are  necessary  to  enable 
them  to  play  their  several  parts  in  the  building  of  the  struc- 
ture of  the  one  World.  Until  very  recently  these  elements, 
have  been  called  ''atoms;"  and  the  business  of  the  physico- 
chemical  sciences  has  been  to  discover  their  irreducible  kinds, 
the  conditions  under  which  each  kind  enters  into  definite  rela- 
tions with  the  other  kinds,  and  the  resulting  properties  of  the 
masses  which  are  composed  of  aggregations  of  these  atoms.  But 
who  that  reflects  does  not  see  at  once  what  sort  of  a  mental 
picture  is  this,  to  which  the  reality  of  the  so-called  atom  is 
supposed  to  correspond  ?  Each  atom  is  somehow  able  to  thread 
its  way  amidst  the  world  of  change ;  it  is  always  entering  into 
more  or  less  new  relations,  with  an  accuracy  and  promptness 
which  cannot  be  born  of  usage  or  of  experience  ;  and  it  invari- 
ably returns  to  its  old  and  tried  relations,  whenever  the  proper 
opportunity  is  offered  for  it  to  show  in  this  way  what  its  essen- 
tial nature,  as  an  atom,  really  is.  Now  science  is  empirical. 
The  terms,  therefore,  in  which  all  this  facile  ability  and  varied 
but  legally  constituted  life  of  the  atom  is  expressed,  must  be 
derived  from  experience.  But  "  experience  "  itself  must  be 
understood  in  the  broadest  and  most  genial  way ;  and  the  only 
experience  which  can  clear  up  the  behavior  of  these  atoms  is 


ATHEISM  AND  PANTHEISM  245 

that  of  a  self-active  being,  or  will,  behaving  itself  teleologically, 
or  according  to  immanent  ideas,  in  varying  relations  to  other 
beings  of  various  so-called  ''classes"  or  "kinds."  That  is  to 
say,  the  atom  must  be  conceived  of,  if  at  all,  as  behaving  like  a 
will  ill  society. 

Modern  science,  however,  is  of  late  discovering  that  tlie 
chemical  conception  of  a  material  atom,  even  with  all  its  enor- 
mous complexity,  is  quite  insufficient  to  explain  our  experience 
with  tilings.  Accordingly  it  seems  necessary  to  supplement  the 
atomic  theory  of  ordinary  matter  with  the  assumption  that  this 
matter,  which  has  mass,  is  everywhere  interpenetrated  with  a 
yet  more  mysterious  and  incomprehensible  entity  ;  and  to  this 
entity,  on  account  of  its  extremely  tenuous  and  subtile  charac- 
ter, the  name  of  "  ether  "  seems  most  appropriate.  This  branch, 
or  arm,  of  the  universal  mechanism,  so  to  say,  must  now  take 
upon  itself  the  more  spirit-like  (-^/c)  actions  and  reactions  for 
which  its  older-born  and  more  grossly  constituted  companion 
seems  inadequate.  But  just  now  the  conception  of  both  atom 
and  ether  is  being  raised,  it  would  almost  seem,  to  the  nth 
power  of  both  teleological  constitution  and  efficiency,  and  also 
of  incomprehensibility.  For  what  appears  to  sense-experience 
as  ordinary  enough  matter  turns  out  to  have,  hitherto  con- 
cealed, the  most  extraordinary  and  even  astounding  properties. 
The  number  of  so-called  "radio-active"  substances  is  on  the 
increase  ;  and  he  would  be  a  bold  prophet  who  should  venture 
confidently  to  predict  where  the  increase  will  stop.  At  the 
same  time,  and  in  consequence  largely  of  the  same  discoveries, 
the  scientific  view  of  the  nature  and  constitution  of  the  now 
old-fashioned  atom  is  undergoing  a  ra[)id  change.  What  the 
plain  man's  pcjrccptivo  consciousness  assures  him  is  only  just 
common  kind  ol'  '-stull,"  incapable  of  self-movement  or  of  the 
realization  of  immanent  purposes,  and  oidy  made — whotlier  by 
nature  or  \)y  (Jod,  it  mattei*s  not — for  man's  convenient  use, 
now  ap[)ears  to  Ik;  all  alive  with  profotin<lly  mysterious  and 
quite  inexplicable  self-art irr  (jualities.      To  its  core,  every  Thing 


246  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

is  more  than  mere  thing  ;  through  and  through  it  is  penetrated 
with  the  semblances  of  a  pkinful  life. 

All  this  experience  undoubtedly  gives  warrant  to  renewed  at- 
tempts to  bridge  the  gaps,  and  to  break  down  or  over  the  bar- 
riers that  have  been  acknowledged  to  exist  hitherto  within  the 
world's  mechanism  itself.  Very  naturally  and  properly,  too, 
this  attempt  takes  in  modern  times  the  same  form  which  it 
took  in  antiquity ; — that  is  to  say,  science  tries  to  account  for 
the  Unity  in  terms  of  greater  simplicity.  Hence  the  infinitely 
varied  real  elements  which,  by  their  combination  and  recom- 
bination, form  the  mechanism  of  the  world,  are  reduced  to 
the  smallest  number  possible ;  the  kinds  of  energy  which 
operate  in  and  through  these  elements  are  considered  as  species 
of  One  Force  ;  the  existing  relations  between  them  are  stated 
in  general  formulas  of  a  mathematical  order ;  and  they  them- 
selves are  figuratively  represented  as  possibly  all  belonging  to 
one  essentially  identical  type.  Thus  the  appearance  of  simplic- 
ity is  produced ;  thus  the  real,  but  infinitely  varied  Unity, 
of  the  World  is  explained  in  terms  of  a  purely  mechanical 
system. 

Far  be  it  from  us  to  scoff  at  science  for  its  failure  to  ex- 
plain experience  in  terms  of  mere  mechanism.  Its  attempts 
are  perfectly  justifiable  in  deference  to  its  own  rights,  its  aims 
and  its  estimate  of  values.  But  when  the  resulting  theoretical 
construction  of  Reality  is  assigned  the  place  of  an  ultimate  ex- 
planatory Principle,  its  failure  to  explain  is  conspicuous 
throughout.  The  appearance  of  simplicity  is  only  specious  ; 
the  forms  of  energy  remain  as  truly  varied  and  characteristic 
as  before.  The  actual  relations  are  found  to  be  much  too  com- 
plicated and  constantly  shifting  to  admit  of  a  satisfactory  ex- 
pression in  any  mathematical  formulas  ;  and  the  elements  of 
reality  themselves  are  only  the  symbols  of  beings  that  are 
packed  full  of  a  yet  more  profoundly  mysterious  and  indefi- 
nitely varied  outfit  of  original  qualities  and  capacities. 

All  this  entrancing  picture  which  modern  science  furnishes 


ATHEISM  AND  PANTHEISM  247 

of  a  cosmic  mechanism,  that  is  self-explanatory  and  able  to 
represent  the  final  truth  which  man  may  know  concerning  the 
real  Being  of  the  World,  comes  far  short  of  meeting  the  ra- 
tional demands  made  by  the  larger  and  more  vitally  interest- 
ing part  of  human  experience.  For  this  part  is  an  experience 
of  life,  and  growth  ; — of  life  in  every  form  of  that  comprehen- 
sive word,  and  of  growth  which  pervades  the  entire  mechan- 
ism and  compels  us  to  consider  it  all  under  tlie  conception  of 
development.  The  Being  of  the  World  is  confessedly  not  a 
fixed  and  unchanging  piece  of  mechanism — however  compli- 
cated and  mysterious.  Its  explanatory  principle  cannot  be 
unfolded  in  any  adequate  way  by  considering  the  condition, 
relations,  and  interactions,  of  the  mechanism  at  any  one  brief 
moment  of  time.  The  mechanism,  which  is  the  world,  has  a 
life-history  ;  it  has  grown  from  a  condition  conceived  of  as 
more  primitive,  toward  a  condition  whicli  must  be  thought  of 
as  in  some  sense  furnishing  a  goal.  But  this  growth  of  the 
mechanism,  which  is  the  evolution  of  the  World  as  known  in 
the  totality  of  human  experience,  is  only  the  aggregate  of  an 
infinite  number  of  interrelated   individual   crrowths.     Out  of 

o 

itself  must  tliis  mechanical  whole  produce  all  manner  of  liv- 
ing individual  existences,  each  one  of  which  in  some  obvious 
or  mysterious  way  partakes  of  the  disposition  and  the  power 
to  aid  in  the  development  of  the  whole. 

And  now  tlie  mind  is  tlirown  violently  back  upon  theoriginal 
proposal  of  the  materialistic  denial  of  that  tenet  of  religious 
philosophy  which  regards  the  World  as  a  dependent  manifes- 
Uition  of  God.  Tiiis  proposal  was  to  furnisli  such  a  concejv 
tion  of  the  elements  wliicli  combine  to  form  the  nuH^lianism, 
that  they  shall  somehow  contiiin  in  themselves,  as  elfments^  the 
8atisfa(3tory  account  of  all  the  cosmic  existences  and  cosmic 
processes.  It  is,  indeed,  a  very  common  opinion,  that  the  mod- 
ern theory  of  evolution  greatly  assists  Ix^th  the  nogativo  and 
the  positive  conclusions  of  materialisin.  Hut  the  very  oppo- 
site is  true,  as  will  Iw  shown  more  in  deUiil  further  on.     For, 


248  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

in  one  word,  a  self-evolving  Mechanism,  composed  of  elements 
which  contain  within  themselves  the  potentiality  of  will  and 
reason  in  a  form  necessary  to  accomplish  such  a  life-history 
for  themselves,  is  a  conception  vastl}^  more  difficult  than  any 
which  the  philosophy  of  religion  has  ever  invited  the  mind  of 
man  to  entertain.  A  Demiurge,  an  Atman  or  World-Soul,  a 
Personal  Absolute, — to  conceive  of  either  of  these  is  a  trifling 
task  as  compared  with  that  demanded  by  a  purely  mechanical 
theory  of  evolution.  From  the  demands  of  this  theory  the  re- 
bound toward  the  midnight  of  a  complete  agnosticism,  a  total 
distrust  of  both  science  and  religious  faith,  seems  inevitable. 

Further  examination  of  the  view  which  would  substitute 
the  conception  of  mechanism  for  the  theistic  position  intro- 
duces in  exaggerated  form  the  difficulty  of  filling  in  the  so- 
called  "  gaps."  In  spite  of  the  increased  refinement  and  po- 
tency which  has  been  given  to  this  conception  by  the  most 
recent  discoveries  of  chemistry,  molecular  physics,  and  biology, 
it  seems  little  better  able  than  before  to  handle  any  of  the 
higher  forms  of  living  beings,  their  reactions,  and  their  ex- 
periences. The  actual  world  contains  innumerable  existences 
which  not  only  move  in  ways  to  correspond  with  the  complex 
natural  endowments  of  atoms  and  of  the  ether,  but  wliich  live, 
in  the  sense  of  feeling,  thinking  and  planning.  Of  these  liv- 
ing beings  some  are  human ;  and  they  are  profoundly  influ- 
enced by  ethical  and  sesthetical  sentiments.  Of  these  human 
beings,  multitudes  believe  in  God  and  regard  themselves  as 
somehow  under  the  influence  of  invisible  spiritual  agencies. 
When  life  begins  amidst  the  physical  mechanism  ;  when  sensa- 
tion and  feeling  first  emerge  from  the  concourse  of  atoms ; 
when  man  commences  to  think  logically  and  to  make  ontolog- 
ical  assumptions  and  postulates  ;  when  moral  and  artistic  sen- 
timents and  ideals  show  their  alluring  and  inspiring  forms  to 
the  upturned  face  of  humanity  ;  when  invisible  but  super- 
human powers  are  almost  felt  as  the  environment  of  the  visible 
and  the  human ;  or  when  One  Infinite,  Absolute,  and  perfect 


ATHEISM  AND  PANTHEISM  249 

Ethical  Spirit  appears  as  the  all-encompassing  and  all- vivifying 
Power ;  then  the  elements  of  physical  reality,  as  conceived  of 
in  terms  of  a  consistent  and  pure  mechanism,  are  indeed  hard 
pressed  by  the  inquirer  for  an  explanation  of  the  phenomena. 
And  here,  as  everywhere,  it  is  not  the  principle  of  continuity, 
or  the  conceptions  of  unity  and  order  that  are  at  stake  in  the 
controversy.  The  problem  is,  the  rather,  whether  the  actually 
existing  continuity,  unity,  and  order,  can  be  at  all  satisfactorily 
explained  in  terms  of  a  mechanical  theory.  It  is  not  at  the 
"  gaps  "  alone  tliat  the  conception  of  mechanism  breaks  utterly 
down.  But  it  is  at  the  gaps  that  its  utter  break-down  and 
inability  throughout  becomes  most  obvious  and  conspicu- 
ous.^ 

The  philosophy  of  religion  is  in  search  of  some  theor}'  of  the 
relations  between  the  World,  as  known  by  ordinary  or  scientifi- 
cally construed  experience,  and  the  Object  of  religious  faith. 
The  hypothesis  of  materialism  not  only  fails  to  account  for 
man's  religious  life  and  development,  but  it  distinctly  shocks 
and  discredits  the  religious  convictions,  sentiments,  and  ideals. 
Certainly,  on  the  one  hand,  these  convictions,  sentiments,  and 
ideals,  must  adapt  themselves  to  the  truth  about  the  cosmic 
existences  and  events  as  this  truth  is  made  known  mure  com- 
pletely by  the  advances  of  science  and  philosophy.  On  the 
other  hand,  religion  is  a  fact,  and  it  is  a  very  stubborn  and 
pei*sistent  fact.  It  therefore  is  perpetually  asking  science  to  ex- 
plain it  to  itself  ;  to  admit  somehow  into  the  circle  of  importiint 
scientific  considerations  the  evidences  for  the  beliefs,  sentiments, 

*  It  seem.s  to  us  that  all  this  may  be  felt  very  keenly,  on  reflecting  upon 
the  phenomena  of  tlie  formation  of  the  living  cell,  or  the  boliavior  of  the  im- 
pregnated ovum.  l'2ach  such  cell  is,  somehow,  u  center  of  definitely  selec- 
tive and  {)l:inful  [)roce«scs,  although  composed  of  a  vast  number  of  atomic 
elements,  llach  such  ovum  starts  a  prtK^ess  of  evolution,  which  is  so  intri- 
cately and  yet  delinitely  a  movement  toward  a  goal  under  the  control  of  an 
immanent  idea,  that  the  part  which  Boience  can  ajisign  to  the  known  phys- 
ical and  chemical  pro{H'rties  of  the  atoms  a.s  compared  with  the  part  con- 
spicuoufily  played  by  the  control  of  this  idea,  is  relatively  iasiguiticaut. 


250  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

and  cult  of  religion.  The  question,  then,  keeps  recurring, 
whether  both  science  and  religion  may  not  be  true  and  faithful 
to  reality,  in  holding  their  respective  views  of  the  world.  To 
answer  this  question  satisfactorily  to  both,  it  would  appear 
necessary  that  science,  on  the  one  hand,  should  greatly  modify 
its  conception  of  the  world  as  mere  mechanism ;  and  that  reli- 
gion, on  the  other  hand,  should  adapt  its  conceptions  of  God 
to  the  demands  of  scientific  truth,  so  far  as  such  truth  is 
statable  in  terms  of  mechanism.  Now  this  is  precisely  the 
problem  which  is  essayed  by  the  theistic  doctrine  of  the  rela- 
tions actually  existing  between  God  and  the  World.  Science 
must  suffer  no  other  restrictions  to  its  theory  of  mechanism 
than  such  as  are  put  upon  it,  in  fact,  by  the  cosmic  existences 
and  processes  themselves ;  and  religion  must  suffer  no  other 
shock  or  damage  to  its  convictions,  sentiments,  and  ideals 
than  that  which  comes  to  ignorance  or  to  bigotry,  when  the  call 
is  sounded  for  a  reexamination  of  the  evidence  for  such  con- 
victions, sentiments,  and  ideals. 

The  extremity  of  materialistic  atheism  is  reached  in  the  dec- 
laration that  all  natural  phenomena,  including  plant-life  and 
all  human  consciousness,  are  reducible  solely  to  terms  of 
atomic  mechanism.  But  this  extreme,  although  sometimes 
reached  by  a  sudden  leap  from  certain  premises  in  fact  to  a 
general  conclusion,  is  seldom  or  never  held  and  applied  with 
strict  logical  consistency.  In  fact,  as  everyone  acquainted 
with  the  most  patent  limitations  of  science  knows,  very  few 
natural  phenomena  are  wholly  "  reducible  to  atomic  mechan- 
ism." Many,  even  of  the  chemical  phenomena  themselves, 
have  as  yet  persistently  refused  to  submit  to  such  reduction; 
and  it  is  in  chemistry,  with  its  wonderful  advances,  that  such 
terms  are  most  strictly  applicable.  In  plant-life,  not  only  as 
the  life  of  an  organism,  but  even  as  the  life  of  the  single  cell, 
atomic  mechanism  has  as  yet  succeeded  in  affording  almost  no 
explanation  of  the  phenomena.  And  the  very  proposal  to 
reduce  human  consciousness  to  an  atomic  mechanism  involves 


ATHEISM  AND  PANTHEISM  251 

the  imagination  in  illusory  figures  of  speech,  that  are  not  only 
unscientific,  but  for  the  most  part  prejudicial  to  the  true  inter- 
ests of  scientific  explanation.  Only  he  who  has  quite  failed 
to  possess  the  simplest  elements  of  an  accurate  conception  of 
the  nature  of  man's  conscious  life,  can  think  of  speaking  of  it 
in  terms  of  a  merely  molecular  or  atomic  mechanism.  And  in 
all  these  cases  criticism  quite  invariably  shows  that,  after  all, 
not  so  much  is  really  meant  as  is  actually  said. 

Pantheism  has  its  origin  in  a  much  more  profound  and  even 
deeply  religious  view  of  the  world,  and  of  the  relations  which 
its  varied  finite  existences  and  transactions  sustain  to  the  great 
Whole.  The  feelings  which  contribute  to  excite  and  to  sup- 
port the  pantheistic  view  are  vague,  but  legitimate  and  power- 
ful ;  they  are  chiefly  tliese  two :  The  feeling  of  the  unity  of 
the  world,  both  of  things  and  of  selves,  and  the  feeling  of  the 
mystery  of  the  world.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  more  re- 
flective forms  of  Pantheism  arise  in  reaction  against  an  extreme 
form  of  dualism  (like  that,  for  example  of  John  Stuart  Mill), 
which  posits  a  good  but  not  omnipotent  and  absolute  Deity  in 
only  a  limited  control  of  the  world  ;'  or,  the  rather,  in  reactions 
against  the  conceptions  of  a  Deism  that  aims  to  banish  the 
feeling  of  mystery  by  presenting  to  the  intellect  precise  and 
apparently  final  definitions  of  God.  The  same  reasons  account 
for  the  fact  that  a  certain  form  of  Theism — that,  for  example, 
advocated  by  Schleiermaclier  wlio  reduced  religion  itself  so 
completely  to  a  vague  and  mystical  feeling  of  dependence  upon 
the  I  nity  of  the  World — so  easily  becomes  almost  or  ([uite  in- 
distinguishable from  certiiin  pantheistic  views. 

The  fundamental  difference  l)otween  the  pantheistic  and  the 
theislic  positions  concerns  the  work  of  reixson  in  representing 
to  itself  the  nature  of  the  relations  which  exist,  in  fact,  l)etwoeii 
the  system  of  finite  things  and  selves  and  the  Object  of  religious 
faitli, — that  is,  l)etwpon  the*  World  and   God.     As  applied  to 

1  Cumpare  the  renmrks  in  A.  Durncr's  Grundri^ii  dcr  Ucligiuu:iphilo6opbie, 
p.  124/. 


252  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  religious  experience  of  man,  the  question  becomes  :  Does 
the  World,  conceived  of  as  a  totality,  account  for  the  origin 
and  development  of  self-conscious  ethical  spirits,  who  pursue 
an  Ideal  of  a  spiritual  order  and  attribute  to  it  a  supreme 
worth ;  or  must  this  world  itself  be  conceived  of  as  having  its 
Ground,  and  the  Law  and  Goal  of  its  evolution,  in  an  Abso- 
lute Ethical  Spirit?  To  this  question,  Pantheism  replies  by  a 
theory  of  identification ;  Theism  answers  with  the  conception 
of  dependent  manifestation,  or  revelation. 

As  soon,  however,  as  the  pantheistic  theory  begins  to  explain 
in  detail  what  it  means  by  identifying  the  World  and  God, 
it  is  apt  to  introduce  distinctions  which  profoundly  modify,  or 
perhaps  completely  destroy,  its  own  doctrine  of  identification. 
As  soon,  on  the  other  hand,  as  the  theistic  conception  begins  so 
to  enlarge  itself,  and  to  abandon  the  enormous  limitations  and 
errors  of  a  quite  untenable  dualism,  it,  too,  seems  compelled 
to  modify,  by  extending,  the  conception  of  "  dependent  mani- 
festation." Thus  certain  very  significant  approaches  of  the  two 
views — the  pantheistic  and  the  theistic — are  certain  to  show 
themselves  in  all  the  contending  answers  to  the  difficult  prob- 
lem: How  shall  the  relations  of  the  World  to  God  be  so  con- 
ceived of  as,  on  the  one  hand,  to  satisfy  the  postulates  and  con- 
clusions of  science  and  philosophy,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  to 
do  justice  to  the  convictions,  sentiments,  ideals,  and  practical 
life  of  religion  ? 

Certain  forms  of  the  identification  of  the  World  and  God 
might  quite  as  well  be  called  atheism,  or  atheistic  agnosticism, 
as  pantheism.  This  is  true  of  much  of  the  doctrine  of  philo- 
sophic Hinduism, — especially  as  taught  in  parts,  at  least,  of  tlie 
Upanishads,  where  it  is  affirmed  that  the  true  nature  of  Deity 
can  be  known  only  by  negations.  "  There  is  a  visible  and  in- 
visible Brahma ;  "  but  the  real  Brahma  is  incomprehensible  and 
is  described  only  by  a  series  of  universal  denials.  So,  also, 
to  identify  the  world,  considered  as  a  lump-sum  of  finite  ex- 
istences and  after  all  reality  of  the  human  soul  has  been  de- 


ATHEISM  AND  PANTHEISM  253 

nied,  with  God — as  certain  forms  of  Buddhistic  theory  have 
done — is  not  to  be  distinguished  in  any  important  respect  from 
an  atheistic  materialism.^ 

In  the  strictest  sense  of  the  words,  all  identification  of  the 
World  and  God  is  atheistic.  The  world,  as  we  are  now  using 
the  term,  is  the  sum-total  of  the  finite  existences,  physical  and 
psychical,  of  which  man  has  experience.  To  say  that  this  i^ 
God,  and  then  to  refuse  to  explain  either  subject,  predicate,  or 
copula, — that  is,  to  make  the  judgment  one  of  identification  in 
the  simplest  and  most  absolute  form  possible — is  equivalent  to 
denying  the  Being  of  God,  in  any  meaning  of  the  word  God 
which  the  religious  experience  can  tolerate,  or  of  which  the 
doctrines  of  religion  can  make  use.  Even  the  most  ignorant 
fetish- worshipper,  or  worshipper  of  some  relatively  insignificant 
and  transitory  natural  phenomenon,  knows  better  than  tliis. 
The  fetish  or  the  phenomenon  is  not  identified  with  what  lie 
worships.  For  he  himself  is  a  spirit ;  and  he  at  least  dimly 
knows  that  his  god  is  a  spirit,  too. 

But  even  after  the  exclusion  of  pantheistic  atheism  and  ma- 
terialism, philosophical  criticism  has  the  greatest  difficulty  in 
fixing  definitely  the  content  of  the  conception  to  be  included 
under  the  word  "Pantheism."  For,  as  says  Professor  Flint:-' 
"  It  has  l)een  so  understood  as  to  include  the  lowest  atheism 
and  the  highest  theism — the  materialism  of  Ilolbach  and 
Biichner,  and  the  si)iritualism  of  St.  Paul  and  St.  John." 
"  There  is  probably  no  pure  pantheism."  In  tracing  the  way 
in  wliich  the  change  from  naYve  polytheism  to  a  more  and  more 
reflective  pantlieismcame  about  in  India  our  attention  is  called 


1  Tor  example,  we  are  told  by  the  Mahajana  of  Japan  that  Huciilha-tathata, 
or  Nature  Absolute,  i«  the  es.st!nco  of  all  things.  Essence  ami  Fonn  were 
originally  combined  and  identical.  Fire  and  water,  from  which  .so  many 
concreto  exiHtences  apparently  originate,  were  themselves  originally  not 
differentiated.  Indeed,  .Matt^-r  and  Thought  are  one — arc  Hudilha-talhata. 
See  (Jrilfis,  The  Religions  of  Japan,  p.  2\^. 

*  .Vntitheistic  Theories,  p.  .'i.'M. 


254  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

to  these  historical  facts :  ^  *'  The  older  divinities  show  one  by- 
one  the  transformation  that  they  suffered  at  the  hands  of 
theosophic  thinkers.  Before  the  establishment  of  a  general 
Father-god,  and  long  before  that  of  the  pantheistic  All-god, 
the  philosophical  leaven  was  actively  at  work.  .  .  .  One  reads 
of  the  god's  '  secret  names,'  of  secrets  in  theology  which  are 
not  to  be  revealed,  till  at  last  the  disguise  is  withdrawn,  and 
it  is  discovered  that  all  the  mystery  of  former  generations  has 
been  leading  up  to  the  declaration  now  made  public :  '  All  the 
gods  are  but  names  of  the  One.'  "  This  declaration  "  Brahma 
alone  is  "  now  becomes  coupled  with  the  declaration  :  "  Every- 
thing else  is  illusion."  "  All  these  gods  are  but  names  of  the 
One  ! "  In  itself  considered,  this  way  of  representing  the  true 
relation  of  the  One  to  the  many  which  had  formerly  been  wor- 
shipped as  the  true  gods,  is  quite  capable  of  being  made  to  run 
parallel  with  the  teaching  of  the  Apostle :  "  Whom  ye  ig- 
norantly  worship,  him  I  make  known  to  you." 

All  the  greater  religions,  as  they  develop  toward  monothe- 
istic views,  under  the  influence  of  reflective  thinking  and  of 
the  various  forces  that  are  constantly  at  work  to  produce  a 
more  complete  unification  of  human  experience,  feel  themselves 
impelled  to  admit  certain  important  truths  which  the  va- 
rious forms  of  pantheism  try  to  incorporate  into  their  theory- 
of  the  identification  of  the  World  and  God.  The  very  predi- 
cates and  attributes  of  God,  as  a  philosophical  monotheism 
conceives  of  Him,  are  dependent  upon  the  recognition  of  these 
truths.  As  we  have  already  seen,  for  example,  God  is  "  om- 
nipotent," can  mean  nothing  less  than  that  there  is  no  form  of 
energy,  physical  or  psychical,  that  has  not  its  source  and 
ground  in  the  Divine  Power.  God  is  "  omnipresent,"  can 
mean  nothing  else  than  that  there  is  nowhere  in  the  world, 
where  God  is  not  in  the  fullness  of  his  Divine  Being ;  all 
"  wheres  "  are  equally  his  "  whereabouts  :  "  there  is  for  Him 
no  '*  here,"  nor  "  there,"  which  is  exclusive  of  any  other  here  or 
1  See  Hopkins,  The  Religions  of  India,  p.  40/. 


ATHEISM  AND  PANTHEISM  255 

there.  God  is  "  omniscient,"  can  mean  nothing  else  than  that 
there  is  no  existence  or  happening  outside  of  his  cognitive 
consciousness  ;  no  movement  or  change  in  anything,  no  phase 
of  any  animal  or  human  consciousness,  that  escapes  his  univer- 
sal co-conscious  Mind.  All  these  relations  of  dependence,  and 
all  the  manifestations  of  the  Divine  Being  which  these  rela- 
tions are,  apply  to  the  whole  World.  Collectively  and  individ- 
ually— with  an  "  all  "  which  is  what  the  logicians  are  accus- 
tomed to  style  the  "  universal  "  and,  as  well,  the  *'  distributive  " 
all — is  it  true  that  finite  beings  *'  live  and  move  and  have  their 
being  "  in  God. 

Those  scriptures  in  which  the  Christian  religion  finds  its 
standard  of  doctrine  regarding  the  relations  of  God  and  the 
World,  abound  in  declarations  that  arise  from  pantheistical 
feelings  and  points  of  view.  The  pious  soul,  conscious  of  the 
divine  indwelling  and  favor,  affirms:  "If  I  ascend  up  into 
heaven,  thou  art  there ;  if  I  make  my  bed  in  hell,  behold  thou 
art  there.  If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning,  and  dwell  in 
the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth,  even  there  shall  thy  iiand 
lead  me."  Yahweh  asks  of  himself,  in  confidence  as  to  what 
the  answer  must  be  :  *'AmI  Gr>d  at  hand,  saith  the  Lord, 
and  not  a  God  afar  off?  Can  any  hide  himself  in  secret  places 
that  I  shall  not  see  him  ?  saith  the  Lord.  Do  not  I  fill  heaven 
and  earth?  saith  the  Lord."  And  when  the  consciousness  of 
the  ethical  perfection  of  this  Divine  One  lias  reached  the  su- 
preme heights,  it  is  ready  to  declare:  "Of  Ilini,  and  througli 
Him,  and  to  Him,  are  all  things;"  and  *'  He  that  dwelleth  in 
love,  dwelleth  in  God,  and  God  dwelleth  in  him."  "  Infinite 
is  the  Buddha,  infinite  the  doctrine,  infinite  the  Order;"  but 
"finite  are  creeping  things,  snakes,  scorpions,  centipedes,  spi- 
ders, lizards,  mice  ! ;  "  and  yet  "the  good  i)riest  is  in  a  su])liino 
state  of  friendliness  to  them  all."  In  its  unchMlying  motif  i\\\B 
Buddhistic  sentiment  is  not  essentially  unlike  that  of  St. 
Fmncis  of  Assisi's  love  of  our  "  dear  brethren"  the  birds;  or 
the  faith  of  Jesus  in  tlie  divine  care  for  the  sjxirrow. 


256  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

The  philosophical  criticism  of  every  form  of  Pantheism 
must  begin  its  work  with  an  examination  into  what  is  really 
meant  by  applying  the  concept  of  ideiitifieation  to  the  relations 
of  the  World  and  God.  Such  an  examination  takes  the  mind 
back  to  a  problem  in  the  theory  of  knowledge ;  or  in  the  appli- 
cation of  abstract  logical  categories  to  real  beings  and  to 
actual  events.  Logic  was  formerly  accustomed  to  symbolize 
the  so-called  principle  of  identity,  as  it  was  supposed  to  under- 
lie and  to  limit,  in  a  perfectly  absolute  way,  all  thinking  and 
knowing,  by  the  abstract  formula  A  is  ^  ;  or  A=A.  But  this 
formula,  even  when  taken  as  a  mere  abstraction,  turns  out  not 
to  be  true.  A  in  the  place  of  subject  to  any  sentence  cannot  be 
identical  with,  or  precisely  equal  to,  A  in  the  place  of  pred- 
icate. Nor  can  any  conceivable  meaning  be  given  to  the  cop- 
ula— whether  this  copula  be  the  verb  "  is  "  or  the  sign  "  =  " 
unless  some  difference  be  recognized  between  the  two  terms 
which  it  unites.  The  much  profounder  logic  of  the  modern 
mathematics  has  therefore  come  to  afSrm  that  no  relations  can 
be  stated,  as  relations  merely,  and  without  specifying  or  defin- 
ing what  objects  are  thus  related :  and  that,  between  any  two 
real  objects,  there  is  always  postulated  at  least  one  relation 
which  obtains  between  no  other  two  knowable  or  conceivable 
objects.  We  cannot  even  say,  "  I  am  I,"  without  implying 
an  important  difference  between  the  "  I "  that  is  subject,  and 
the  "  I "  that  it  predicates  of  itself ;  and  of  which  it  somehow 
affirms  an  essential  and  living  unity  with  itself.  For,  really 
to  be  se^-identical  is  actually  to  live  the  life  of  a  self-differen- 
tiating and  self-identifying  being.  And  one  moment  of  this  life 
is  given  to  the  finite  Self  whenever  it  knows  itself  as  self-con- 
scious and  cognitive. 

The  attempt,  therefore,  to  apply  the  category  of  Identity  to 
the  relations  existing  between  the  Absolute  and  the  sum-total 
of  cosmic  existences  and  happenings  is  above  all  other  attempts 
of  this  sort,  illogical  and  even  absurd.  And,  indeed,  this  is 
never  what  Pantheism,  when  it  tries  to  take  its  terms  out  from 


ATHEISM  AND  PANTHEISM  257 

behind  the  misty  veil  of  feeling  which  envelops  them,  really 
does.  The  World  which  it  affirms  to  he  God  is  never  con- 
ceived of  as,  in  all  its  terms,  precisely  the  same  as  God.  The 
affirmation,  when  strictly  interpreted,  turns  out  to  be  one  of 
relations  and  not  of  strict  identification.  And  the  relations  es- 
pecially apt  to  be  selected  for  expounding  the  real  meaning  of 
the  copula — *'  is  "  or  '*  equals  to  " — are  those  of  dependence 
and  manifestation  !  Otherwise,  it  would  be  quite  as  effective  to 
say,  "  Tlie  World  is  the  World ;  "  or  ''  God  is  God  ;  "  as  to  say, 
"  The  World  is  God."  To  identify  the  sum-total  of  existences 
and  events,  as  known  or  knowable  by  man,  with  the  Absolute 
or  World-Ground,  is  to  destroy  the  absoluteness  of  the  Abso- 
lute, by  making  it  dependent  wholly  upon  the  exercise  of  man's 
faculties  of  knowing.  Whereas,  to  regard  this  World,  and  all 
that  man  can  discover  about,  or  know  of  it,  as  only  a  veiy 
partial  and  temporary  but  real,  dependent  manifestation  of  God, 
is  to  make  rational  and  consistent  the  beliefs  and  feelings  which 
befit  the  Divine  Absoluteness  and  Infinity. 

There  is  one  class  of  relations,  liowever,  to  whicli  the  category 
of  identity,  in  its  more  strictly  pantheistic  signification,  lias  al>- 
solutely  no  applicability  whatever.  Such  are  the  relations 
which  arise  and  maintain  themselves  between  persons.  Rut 
religion,  wliether  as  belief,  sentiment,  or  cult, — on  the  side  of 
man  at  lejist, — is  a  personal  affair.  Only  a  being  which  has  de- 
veloped some  capacity  for  knowing  itself  as  a  pei*son,  and  for 
entering  voluntarily  into  personal  and  social  relations  with 
other  beings,  can  be  religious.  Only  as  this  same  Ixjing  im- 
parts to  cosmic  existences,  the  ^«<^ri(i-{)ersonal  and  spiritual 
qualities  which  ho  recognizes  in  himself,  docs  he  regard  these 
existences  as  objects  of  religi(jus  belief  and  wt)rship.  Hut 
personal  beings  cannot  1x3  unified  b}- a  process  of  logical  identi- 
fication, as  it  were.  As  long  as  I  remain  I,  or  am  »*7/-identical 
at  all,  I  cannot  identify  myself,  or  l>e  identified  byothera,  with 
any  other  thing  or  j>erson.  This  power  of  self-identification, 
with  its  revei*so  or  com[)lementary  power  of  distinguishing  the 

17 


258      .  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Self  from  others,  may  indeed  be  lost ;  but  when  it  is  lost,  the 
Self  ceases,  either  temporarily  or  permanently,  to  exist  at  all. 
In  a  word,  the  conception  of  two  persons,  "  identical "  as  per- 
sons, is  a  purely  negative  conception ;  it  cannot  be  stated  in 
terms  that  are  not  self-contradictory.  Selves  cannot  he  identified 
otherwise  than  hy  self-identification  and  seIf-differentiatio7i. 

Both  Pantheism  and  Theism,  therefore,  are  forced  to  use 
such  terms  as  "communion,"  or  "union,"  in  order  to  express 
the  most  intimate  relations  which  can  possibly  exist  between 
finite  persons  and  the  Divine  Being.  Or  if  such  terms  as  "  ab- 
sorption," or  "  reentrance  "  into  the  Divine  Being,  be  made  the 
goal  of  pious  desire  and  endeavor ;  unless  these  terms  continue 
to  bear  a  wholly  inappropriate  and  purely  physical  signification, 
they  cannot  be  interpreted  as  any  species  of  identification.  To 
say  that  the  human  Self  is  so  absorbed  in  God  at  death  as  to 
return  to  the  condition  of  an  unconscious,  or  non-selfconscious 
part  of  Divine  Being,  is  simply  to  deny  the  Self's  continued 
existence. 

When,  therefore,  the  conceptions  of  Pantheism  and  Theism 
are  examined,  in  order  to  discover  in  what  important  respects 
they  differ  concerning  the  relations  of  the  World  and  God,  it 
is  discovered  that  the  differences  all  center  about  the  idea  of 
pereonality.  To  say  that  the  World  is  God,  or  may  be  identi- 
fied with  God,  in  the  pantheistic  meaning  of  the  words,  is  equiv- 
alent to  affirming  that  the  sum-total  of  cosmic  existences  and 
processes  implies  only  an  impersonal  World-Ground.  In  brief, 
the  only  Pantheism,  which  is  not  virtually  a-theism,  differs  from 
Theism,  in  failing  to  rise  to  the  full-orbed  conception  of  the 
personality  of  God.  In  its  sight,  the  Being  of  the  World  is, 
indeed,  somehow  worthy  of  the  mystical  and  worshipful  feel- 
ings, and  even  of  the  loving  service,  which  is  due  to  the  Di- 
vine. In  the  view  of  pantheism,  however,  this  Being  is  not 
properly  conceived  of  when  given  the  predicates  and  attributes 
of  an  Absolute  Self. 

Yet  here  again  it  is  true  that  so-called  Pantheism  has  many 


ATHEISM  AND  PANTHEISM  259 

shades  of  meaning  and  degrees  of  approach  to  the  highest  and 
best  thoughts  of  Theism.  For  it  has  the  figurative  and  flow- 
ery way  of  dealing  with  its  conception  of  the  World,  which 
makes  it  correspond  to  the  theory  of  Mechanism  as  God.  Thus 
the  Divine  Being  of  the  World  is  identified  with  the  sum-total 
of  cosmic  existences  and  processes,  when  conceived  of  after 
the  analogy  of  an  impersonal  World-Soul,  or  of  an  Idea  whicli 
the  cosmic  processes  are  realizing,  or  of  a  Universal  Life  which 
is  immanent  in  the  phenomena.  The  God,  which  the  World 
is,  now  becomes  thought  of  as  somehow  transcending — poten- 
tially at  least — all  the  phenomena  of  the  univei'se,  whether 
considered  in  their  temporal,  their  spatial,  or  their  more  espe- 
cially dynamic,  relations.  But  this  view  brings  tlie  thought 
hopefully  near  to  the  theistic  position.  And  from  this  position 
we  need  not  be  disturbed,  and  cannot  Ije  dislodged,  by  being 
told  that  God,  when  "  qualified  by  his  relation  to  an  Other  " 
is  *'  distracted  finitude."^  We  may  even  admit  that  the  Abso- 
lute is  not  "  merely  pereonal ;  "  until,  at  least,  the  term  personal 
has  itself  been  interpreted  in  a  higher  than  the  ordinary  sense. 
How  possible  it  is  to  mingle  the  higher  theistic  with  a-theis- 
tic  conceptions,  in  the  attempt  to  reach  a  more  satisfying  form 
of  Pantheism,  may  be  illustrated  by  such  declarations  as  the 
following:'^  "  Personality  is  a  self-comprehending  Selfliood  in 
opposition  to  Another ;  on  the  contrary.  Absoluteness  is  the 
All-comprehending,  the  Unlimited,  which  excludes  from  itself 
nothing  but  just  that  exclusiveness  which  Ix'longs  to  the  very 
conce[)tion  of  personality  ;  absolute  personality  is,  tliereforo, 
sheer  nonsense,  an  aljsurd  idea  (a  7ion  ernt^.  God  is  not  a  per- 
son by  the  side  of  and  above  other  pei*sons  ;  but  the  eternal 
movement  of  universal  existence,  wliich  is  only  reahzed  and 
becomes  o])jective  in  tlie  sul)ject.  The  poi-sonality  of  God, 
therefore,  must  not  be  conceived  of  as  individual  but  as  a  uni- 

*  See  Mr.  Hnidloy,  Ai)|>oaninro  and  Ronlity,  pp.  445,  and  .131. 
'Compare  Strauss,  Chribtlichc    Glaubcnblchre,  I,  (  33,  Von  der  /Vrsc^fv- 
Ixchkfit  GotUs. 


260  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

versal  personality  (^Allpersonlichkeit );  and  instead  of  personi- 
fying the  Absolute,  we  must  learn  to  conceive  of  it  as  personi- 
fying itself." 

The  mixture  of  truths,  half-truths,  and  self-contradictory 
errors,  which  characterizes  this  classical  example  of  the  argu- 
ments advanced  by  the  pantheistic  conception  of  the  World 
and  God,  has  been  essentially  the  same  all  the  way  from  the 
Vedanta  philosophy  down  to  the  writers  quoted  above.  When 
we  are  told  that  *'  God  is  not  a  person  by  the  side  of  and  above 
other  persons  ;  "  and  that  "  the  personality  of  God  must  not  be 
conceived  of  as  individual,"  but  as  "a  universal  personality," 
we  may  recognize  a  certain  essential  truth  to  the  statements, 
in  spite  of  the  awkwardness  of  their  form.  To  say  that,  *'  in 
place  of  personifying  the  Absolute,  we  must  learn  to  conceive 
of  it  as  personifying  itself  ad  infinitum ^^''  is  to  remind  Theism 
of  considerations  which  it,  indeed,  needs  to  take  into  its 
account.  These  very  considerations  are,  indeed,  most  effective 
means  to  controvert  the  conclusions  of  Pantheism.  For  an  Ab- 
solute that^s  "  universal  personality,"  oris  capable  of  "personi- 
fying itself  ad  infinitum^^''  can  be  conceived  of  only  in  terms  of 
personality.  But  what  becomes  of  the  warning  that,  to  try  to 
unite  the  conceptions  "absolute"  and  "personality"  is  to  per- 
petrate "  sheer  nonsense,"  to  construct  an  "  absurd  idea  ?  " 
And  if  we  could  succeed  in  conceiving  of  this  Absolute  as  per- 
sonifying itself,  and  as  continuing  to  do  this  very  thing  ad  in- 
finitum^ how  should  we  escape  the  charge  of  making  the  Abso- 
lute itself  responsible  of  realizing  "sheer  nonsense,"  and  an 
"  absurd  idea  "  ?  Theism,  on  the  contrary,  may  hold  that  to 
personify  one's  self  expresses  admirably  the  very  essence  of  per- 
sonality. No  finite  person  can  become  a  person  without  per- 
sonifying itself.  But  every  finite  person,  who  progressively 
better  and  better  accomplishes  tliis  task,  who  makes  his  own 
Self  a  more  and  higher  Self,  does  this  only  in  dependence 
upon  the  Absolute  Self.  Religion  crowns  the  task  of  self- 
personifying,  with  its  gift  of  that  spirit  of  filial  confidence  and 


ATHEISM  AND  PANTHEISM  261 

ethical  love  which,  by  an  habitual  attitude  of  the  self-determin- 
ing will,  unites  the  finite  person  in  a  moral  and  spiritual  union 
with  God. 

While,  then,  Theism  needs  constantly  to  incorporate  into 
itself  those  profound  considerations  wliich  are  emphasized  by 
tlie  higher  and  more  spiritual  forms  of  the  pantheistic  theory, 
and  to  which  certain  relictions  sentiments  of  the  hicrhest  value 
naturally  and  promptly  respond,  it  cannot  loosen  its  grasp  upon 
the  conception  of  a  personal  God ;  it  cannot  take  to  itself  the 
impersonal,  or  imperfectly  personal.  Deity  which  Pantheism 
offers  in  his  stead.  To  do  this  is  to  dream  rather  than  to 
think ;  the  dreamer,  if  he  continues  sane  and  logical,  is  sure 
to  awaken  from  his  dream  to  find  that  he  has  embraced  no 
more  reality  than  that  of  a  vanishing  cloud.  On  this  cardinal 
point  the  real  and  final  Issue  between  Pantheism  and  Theism 
is  joined ;  the  ultimatiun  is  stated,  upon  the  basis  of  which 
alone,  if  at  all,  a  lasting  peace  can  be  secured.  A  final  choice 
must  \yQ  made  between  tlie  Ideal  of  self-conscious,  rational, 
and  Ethical  Spirit,  as  the  Ground  of  all  Reality,  and  all  the 
many  vague  conceptions  which  the  pantheistic  theory  has  to 
oppose  to  this  ideal. 

Further  in  favor  of  maintaining  a  firm  tenure  of  the  com- 
plete theistic  position  is  tluit  inevitable  vacillation  between 
atheism  and  the  extreme  of  mysticism  to  which  the  more 
fervidly  religious  forms  of  the  pantheistic  hypothesis  are  con- 
stantly liable.  Spinoza,  for  example,  in  his  doctrine  of  God  as 
Universal  Suljstance,  or  of  natarn  nnfurans  devoid  of  truly  [)i'r- 
sonal  qualities,  was  correctly  judged  atlieistic  by  the  ortho 
doxy  of  the  seventeenth  century.  In  the  last  chapter  of  his 
Ethh'it,  however,  he  states  the  theory  of  the  Divine  Love  as 
the  true  moral  bond  and  real  union  of  all  souls,  in  a  manner 
which  might  well  seem  acceptable  to  the  Christian  mystics  of 
all  ages  of  C'hristianity. 

Th(^  imperfect  or  erroneous  conception  of  personality,  which 
differences  the  pantheistic  from  the  theistic  notion  of  the  Divine 


262  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Being,  becomes  particularly  obvious  in  the  doctrine  of  mayi's 
nature  and  relations  to  God.  By  Pantheism  the  personality 
of  which  the  human  individual  is  capable  is  not  conceived  of 
in  its  true,  full,  and  highest  significance.  This  defective  con- 
ception is  expressed  in  various  figures  of  speech  which  are  not 
only  taken  from  physical  relations  but  which  are  appropriate 
only  to  things  and  to  the  relations  of  things.  Thus,  for  ex- 
ample, the  Hindu  doctrine,  in  its  more  purely  pantheistic  form, 
although  it  regards  man's  atman,  or  soul,  as  some  sort  of  an 
indestructible  entity,  represents  its  relation  to  the  Atman  of 
the  World,  as  that  of  a  "  portion  "  or  ''fragment "  to  the  whole. 
Union  of  the  two  is,  therefore,  made  complete  by  an  "  absorp- 
tion "  of  one  in  the  Other,  to  the  loss  of  its  own  personal  exist- 
ence. All  is  Atman ;  and  my  atman  is  part  of  the  impersonal 
absolute  All-being ;  which  may,  indeed,  as  properly  be  called 
Brahma  as  Atman.  The  Buddhistic  doctrine  of  the  non-reality 
of  soul,  on  the  contrary,  destroys  the  personality  of  man  in  an- 
other way  ; — namely,  by  resolving  it  into  a  mere  series  of  states, 
having  moral  significance  indeed,  but  not  implying  or  revealing 
that  self-active,  self-personifying  power  which  is  the  essence 
of  even  finite  personalit3^  In  similar  way  the  modern  pantheism 
of  Schopenhauer  and  his  followers  and  successors,  where  it 
does  not  vacillate — as,  indeed,  it  is  constantly  doing — between 
the  theistic  and  the  strictly  pantheistic  conception  of  the  re- 
lations which  man  sustains,  for  his  origin,  continued  existence, 
moral  welfare,  and  destiny,  toward  the  Absolute,  is  equally 
defective  and  confused. 

Much,  if  not  all,  therefore,  of  the  contested  difference  be- 
tween Pantheism  and  Theism,  as  to  the  Divine  Being  and  as 
to  the  relations  sustained  to  this  Being  by  finite  things  and 
finite  selves,  depends  upon  a  fundamental  difference  in  the 
conception  of  self-hood  or  personality.  And  since  religious 
experience  seems  always  impelled,  if  not  compelled,  to  express 
itself  with  reference  to  these  matters  in  symbolic  and  figurative 
terms,  the  settlement  of  the  controverted  difference  between 


ATHEISM  AND  PANTHEISM  2G3 

the  two  forms  of  religious  philosophy  is  largely  dependent 
upon  the  way  in  which  each  interprets  these  symbols  and  fig- 
ures of  speech.  In  the  one  case,  the  interpretation  is  wont  to 
regard  all  cosmic  existences,  processes,  and  events,  as  only  the 
phenomenal  and  illusory  aspects,  the  apparent  modifications  or 
parts,  of  an  impersonal  and  eternal  Substance.  In  the  other 
case,  the  existences,  processes,  and  events  are  regarded  as  a 
real,  though  partial  and  dependent,  manifestation  of  One  self- 
conscious,  rational,  and  ethical  Will. 

But  while  Theism  regards  man,  like  all  other  finite  beings, 
as  a  dependent  manifestation  of  the  Divine  Being, — a  child  of 
the  World,  so  to  say — it  also  places  him  in  other  and  quite 
distinctly  different  relations,  than  those  which  things  and  ani- 
mals have,  to  God.  Man  is  "  God's  child,"  in  a  peculiar  sense  ; 
his  nature  is  the  inchoate  and  undeveloped  image  of  God,  as  a 
self-determining  ethical  spirit ;  and,  therefore,  God  and  man  may 
come  into  more  definitely  reciprocal  personal  relations.  These 
relations  it  is  the  end  of  religion  to  establish  and  to  perfect. 
Thus  man's  personality,  instead  of  being  lost  in  the  impersonal 
World-Ground,  may  be  saved  and  raised  to  a  higher  potency 
by  a  voluntary  and  ethical  union  with  God. 

A  philosophy  of  religion  which  helps  to  secure  this  supreme 
good  for  Immanit}^  in  accordance  with  the  approved  trutlis  of 
science  and  history,  has  done  all  that  reflective  thinking  can 
do  for  religious  experience.  And  in  this  attempt  the  impor- 
tant considerations  for  which  the  pantheistic  conception  hiis 
stood,  in  all  the  greater  religions  and  not  least  of  all  in  Chris- 
tianity, must  be  accorded  the  high  estimate  of  their  worth 
which  ia  their  due. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 

NATURE  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

The  possibility  and  the  reality  of  "the  Supernatural"  so- 
called,  as  well  as  the  character  of  the  relations,  if  any,  to  be 
established  between  it  and  the  existences  and  forces  which  are 
called  "  natural,"  cannot  be  discussed  without  some  preliminary 
examination  of  the  value  of  the  terms  employed.  Both  these 
terms — Nature  and  Supernatural — are  very  complex  and  ab- 
stract. They  cover  conceptions  whose  content  needs  analysis 
and  reflection,  before  any  theory  of  the  two  can  be  stated, — 
much  less  justified  by  an  appeal  to  experience.  The  word 
nature,  when  used  in  contrast  with  the  supernatural,  should 
always  be  understood  in  the  meaning  properly  given  to  it  by 
a  pure  empiricism.  It  is  just  that  complex  of  existences  and 
changing  relations  which  is  actually  given  in  human  experience. 
Its  evidence  consists  of  the  observations,  and  reasonable  and 
defensible  inferences,  of  the  positive  sciences.  In  Kantian  ter- 
minology, nature  is  the  sum-total  of  known,  or  knowable,  "  phe- 
nomenal realities."  The  moment,  however,  metaphysics  is  em- 
ployed, whether  in  the  alleged  interests  of  a  more  profound 
science  or  of  a  more  rational  exposition  of  the  religious  experi- 
ence, so  to  break  up  the  conception  of  nature  as  to  find  within 
it  some  inner  Principle,  whether  of  Being  or  of  Unity  of  Force, 
which,  as  a  self-consistent  Totality,  shall  account  for  the  order 
and  orderly  evolution  of  natural  phenomena,  then  there  has  vir- 
tually been  introduced,  not  only  the  problem,  but  the  explana- 
tory conception,  of  the  s?/^er-natural.  That  is,  over  and  be- 
yond that  which  appears  in  experience,  there  is  now  implied  a 


NATURE  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL      265 

Something-More^  a  Super-Being  of  the  World.  Reflective  think- 
ing finds  itself  compelled  to  recognize  that  which  is  beyond  the 
natural — in  the  restricted  meaning  of  the  word  ;  and  to  which 
it  attributes  the  chief  ontological  value.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  the  metaphysics  of  physics  likes  so  well  to  spell  with  im- 
posing capitals  such  words  as  Order,  Law,  Nature,  and  Unity 
of  Force. 

For  Theism  the  Supernatural  is  God — nothing  more ;  but 
then  also,  nothing  less. 

The  distinction  set  up  between  nature  and  the  supernatural, 
or  rather  between  the  naturalistic  and  the  supernaturalistic 
way  of  regarding  and  explaining  finite  beings  and  finite  events, 
is  as  old  as  either  science  or  religion.  It  appears  primarily  to 
rest  upon  the  difference  between  what  is  known  to  be  done  by 
man's  agency  and  what  is,  on  account  of  some  peculiar  mys- 
tery about  its  causation,  conjectured  to  be  done  by  some  other 
spirit  than  man.  In  this  form,  it  is  merely  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  human  and  thesuperliuman.  For  according  to  the 
belief  of  primitive  religion,  all  things  are  done  by  spiritual 
agencies,  and  what  is  not  done  by  my  spirit  or  your  spirit  is, 
of  course,  done  by  some  invisible  spirit.  Should  tliis  deed 
seem  the  more  remarkable,  because  it  is  something  which  nei- 
ther you  nur  I  can  do, — unless,  indeed,  the  invisible  spirits  ac- 
complish it  through  one  of  us, — then  it  is  essentially  super- 
liuman  ;  and  because  it  excites  wonder  and  woi-shipful  feeling, 
it  is  divine.  Thus  among  the  Peruvians  the  word  Iluacas,  or 
"  the  extraordinary,"  is  the  term  for  the  godlike  ;  and  the  word 
Kami^  or  *'  the  admiralilo,"  among  the  Japanese.  On  the  other 
hand,  savage  or  primitive  man  is  by  no  means  wholly  without 
knowledge*  of  that  regular,  dependable,  and  understandable, 
nature  and  interconnection  of  things  which  contains  the  germ 
of  the  conception  of  **  Nature  "  and  tlie  *'  natural."'  Whatever 
may  be  conjectured  as  to  the  nienUil  capacities  and  attitudes 

*  So  Wuitz  and  coinpure  I)'A1\  iella,  Lectures  on  the  Origin  and  Growth  of 
the  Conception  of  God,  p.  CJ/. 


266  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

of  so-called  primitive  man,  the  arts  of  making  a  fire,  of  con- 
structing and  using  stone  implements,  and  of  preparing  food, 
imply  the  naturalistic,  as  well  as  the  supernatural,  point  of 
view.  For  savage  logic,  as  Jevons  maintains,^  is  in  no  im- 
portant respect  different  from  the  logic  of  the  trained  man  of 
science.  The  same  necessity  tends  powerfully  in  the  direction 
of  compelling  the  most  scientific  minds  to  resort  to  some  hy- 
pothesis of  unifying  invisible  principles  ; — that  is,  of  the  essen- 
tially super-nsituTSil  (^above  the  natural^  as  it  is  empirically 
known  in  terms  of  the  positive  sciences)  in  some  one  of  its 
several  possible  forms.  By  the  multitude  the  distinction  is 
made,  although  more  reluctantly,  scarcely  less  naively  to-day 
than  it  was  decades  of  centuries  ago. 

The  conceptions  of  the  natural  and  the  supernatural,  al- 
though persistent  and  universal,  are  in  their  application  ex- 
ceedingly vague,  shifty,  and  unintelligent.  For  example,  the 
erysipelas  due  to  bathing  when  overheated  is  thought  by  the 
Australian  black-man  to  be  caused  by  an  evil  water-spirit. 
The  illness  of  the  Peruvian  mountaineer,  when  he  descends  to 
live  in  the  valley,  is  ascribed  to  the  supernatural  power  of  the 
sea.  The  Kafir,  however  skillful  he  may  be  in  the  multiplica- 
tion and  care  of  his  cattle  by  resources  under  his  control,  never- 
tlieless  prays :  ^  "This  kraal  of  yours  is  good;  you  have  made 
it  great  .  .  .  .you  have  given  me  many  cattle ;  you  have 
blessed  me  greatly.  Every  year  I  wish  to  be  thus  blessed,  etc." 
It  is  customary  to  say  that,  with  the  advances  of  natural  science, 
the  sphere  of  activities  allowed  to  the  supernatural  has  been 
constantly  contracting ;  until  now  he  who  trusts  the  empirical 
evidences  for  his  conception  of  nature  can  no  longer  tolerate 
the  conception  of  the  supernatural  in  any  of  its  hitherto  current 
meanings.  This  conclusion  is  then  taken  to  mean  that  God 
has  been  driven  out  of  the  World ;  at  least,  as  this  world  is 
known  to  man  in  terms  of  the  positive  sciences.     To  tins  con- 

1  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Religion,  p.  18/. 

2  Shooter,  Kafirs  of  Natal,  p.  166. 


NATURE  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL      267 

elusion,  theological  orthodoxy  has  opposed  in  vain  a  view  sim- 
ilar to  that  of  Cleombrotus ;  and  which  regards  those  who 
exclude  tlie  Divine  Being  altogetlier  from  secondary  causes 
and  those  who  see  Him  everywhere,  as  equally  in  error.  The 
remedy  for  such  an  error  is  to  draw  the  line  between  the  nat- 
ural and  the  supernatural  just  behind  the  footsteps  of  Provi- 
dence, after  it  directly  "intervenes,"  " interposes,"  or  "inter- 
feres," in  the  world's  affairs.  Thus  God  is  either  altogether 
banished  from,  or  is  made  a  meddler  in,  the  World  of  which 
he  is  the  Ground  ! 

The  distinction  between  Nature  and  the  Supernatural  must 
be  made  satisfactory  both  to  science,  if  not  to  all  the  "  scien- 
tists," and  to  the  religious  experience,  if  not  to  all  the  theo- 
logians. Both  the  scientific  and  the  religious  points  of  view 
are  truly  tiiken ;  both  conceptions  are  sure  to  be  somehow 
held,  and  employed,  in  the  effort  to  express  and  to  explain  the 
total  experience  of  the  human  race.  The  reconciliation  of  the 
two,  so  that  they  shall  no  longer  be  antithetic  and  mutually 
exclusive,  must  be  found  in  some  higher  conception  which  in- 
cludes them  both. 

In  this  laudable  effort  at  reconciliation,  certain  mistaken 
ideas  as  to  the  distinction  between  the  natural  and  the  super- 
natural, and  as  to  the  character  of  the  theistic  position,  so  far 
as  it  commends  itself  to  thoughtful  minds,  must  be  recognized 
and  abandoned  from  the  very  start.  The  truths  of  experience 
are  indeed  em])odied  iu  both  these  two  conceptions ;  both 
views  call  loudly  for  recognition  at  the  hands  of  the  philosophy 
of  religion.  These  truths  are  either  wholly  abrogated  or  much 
iiiij)aired,  by  (a)  the  materialistic  rejection  of  the  supernatural 
altogetlier;  by  (/*)  the  idealistic  doTiial  of  the  reality  of  nature 
(iu  the  funu  of  solipsism)  ;  or  by  (<•)  the  agnostic  denial 
of  all  j)ossibility  of  relations  between  the  two.  Neither  can 
tliL'se  truths  Ije  se(;ured  if  the  natural  and  sup<Tnatural  are  re- 
garded ;us  mutually  exclusive  spheres  of  existence  and  of  ac- 
tivity. 


268  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

The  word  s^/joer-natural  does,  indeed,  suggest  a  spatial  rela- 
tion ;  but  to  take  the  suggestion  seriously  would,  in  the  light 
of  the  modern  scientific  view  of  the  world,  be  absurd.  God 
no  longer  appears  to  enlightened  thought  as  spatially  superior 
to  nature, — over  the  natural — ,  as  though  managing  it  from 
above.  Nor  can  our  thought  truthfully  represent  the  natural 
and  the  supernatural  as  regularly  (^.  ^.,  except  upon  occasions, 
as  it  were),  taking  no  account  of  each  other.  Such  a  form  of 
representation  is  not  only  antithetic  to  the  conclusions  of  the 
positive  sciences,  but  it  also  leads  logically  to  the  position  that 
revelation  and  inspiration  are  ?^?matural  and  w?ireasonable, — 
or  foreign  to  the  rational  nature  of  either  man  or  God.  In- 
deed, if  we  understand  nature  and  reason  in  this  limited  way, 
we  seem  obliged  to  say  that  all  revelation,  and  all  religion, 
must  be  both  5Mjt?er-natural  and  super-TRtiono}. 

The  reconciliation  of  the  two  contrasted,  but  not  antithetic, 
aspects  of  human  experience  with  the  world  of  things  and 
selves,  can  be  accomplished  in  only  one  way.  The  immanency 
of  God  in  nature  and  in  human  society,  and  his  transcendency 
as  Personal  Absolute  and  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  must  both 
be  maintained  and  harmonized.  But  the  considerations  which 
not  only  make  this  view  possible,  but  which  require  it,  are 
amply  provided  by  both  the  scientific  and  the  religious  expe- 
rience of  the  race.  For  even  from  the  lower  points  of  view,  as 
required  by  the  positive  sciences,  every  existence  and  every 
event  in  the  world — i.  e.,  in  nature  as  presented  empirically 
to  man's  perception  and  intellect — may  be,  and  indeed  must 
be,  regarded  from  several  points  of  view.  Reality  is  rich 
enough  to  justify  and  to  harmonize  the  conclusions  from  all 
these  points  of  view.  No  individual  Thing,  or  meanest  Self 
among  men,  is  so  poor  as  not  to  display  more  or  less  of  all  this 
wealth  actually  existent  in  its  peculiar  content.  This  tree, 
this  watch,  for  example,  is  indeed  just  a  mere  tree,  a  7nere 
watch.  It  has  its  own  species,  or  own  manufacture ;  it  can 
grow  a  form  and  fruitage  of  a  definite  kind;  or  it  can  tell 


NATURE  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL  269 

time  to  serve  the  practical  conveniences  of  its  owner.  But 
even  when  taken  thus,  the  tree,  or  the  watch,  is  a  concrete 
embodiment,  an  accomplished  realization,  of  all  the  natural 
and  psychical  forces.  Its  individual  being  actualizes  all  the 
so-called  categories. 

But  how  vastly  different  a  thing  to  science  is  this  tree,  this 
watch  ;  and  how  different  its  being  and  qualities,  when  viewed 
from  the  different  scientific  standpoints  !  To  chemistry,  the 
watch  is  no  longer  a  material  continuum,  that  is  movable 
only  from  without,  and  anal3^zable  by  ordinary  mechanical 
processes — such  as  breaking,  pounding,  pulling  apart,  etc., — 
into  bits  of  the  same  kind  of  stuff,  appreciable  by  the  unaided 
senses.  It  is,  the  rather,  when  regarded  from  the  chemist's 
chosen  point  of  view,  what  no  eye  can  see,  or  hand  touch,  or 
other  sense-perception  immediately  apprehend  and  appreciate. 
It  is  a  vast  collection  of  invisible  and  intiingible  elements,  with 
mysterious  natures  of  their  own,  and  uniform  modes  of  self- 
activity  in  ever  changing  relations  to  other  elements.  More- 
over, these  elements  "  obey  laws  ;  "  and  the  laws  are,  partially 
at  least,  expressible  in  terms  of  mathematical  formulas.  But 
wliat  can  be  meant  by  "  obeying  laws,"  is  to  be  explained  only 
when  a  return  in  thought  is  made  to  this  same  mysterious 
**  nature  "  of  that  which  is  invisible  and  intangible.  The  real 
watch  is  no  longer  a  mere  Thing,  as  things  appear  to  the  plain 
man's  everyday  experience.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the 
senses,  in  their  appreciation  of  the  natural,  science  has  raised 
this  Thing  to  the  realm  of  the  super-WAiMYoX.  For  this  watch 
is,  in  all  its  essential  qualities  as  known  to  chemistry  and  as 
described  in  chemical  terms,  so  much  ^' over  "  and  ^' above  " 
the  everyday  nature  of  that  same  watch,  as  to  make  it  quite 
another  kind  of  existence.  Yet  it  is  the  same  Thing,  only  re- 
garded from  different  points  of  view,  and  with  a  profounder 
insight,  and  as  subjected  to  more  comprehensive  observations 
and  tniins  of  reasoning.  Tlu»  wat^'h  of  "  eonnnon  sense,"  anil 
the  watcli  of  chemistry,  are  not  two  watches  ;  they  are  not  anti- 


270  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

thetic  or  opposed  to  each  other ;  they  do  not  negate  each  other, 
as  though  they  belonged  to  wholly  distinct  and  mutually  exclu- 
sive spheres  of  reality.  It  is  one  watch,  seen  from  two  differ- 
ent points  of  view.  And  if  the  one  watch  were  shown  to  the 
fetish-worshipper,  he  would  doubtless  be  easily  persuaded  to 
recognize  its  divinity,  and  to  propitiate  its  mysterious,  invisible, 
but  indwelling  divine  power. 

When  the  tree — just  this  plain  thing  of  a  tree,  with  which 
every  beholder  is  sufficiently  familiar  in  many  aspects  of  its 
being — reveals  its  inner  nature,  not  only  to  physiological  chem- 
istry but  also  to  biology,  it  transcends  its  own  apparent  nature, 
even  much  more  than  does  the  watch.  For  the  tree  not  only 
"  moves,"  and  "  has  its  being,"  in  the  Being  of  the  World  ; 
it  "  lives  "  in  this  Being.  And  being  alive,  every  element  of 
this  common  and  familiar  thing,  would  have  to  be  declared 
most  super-ua^taval^  as  contrasted  with  that  which  is  ordinary 
and  natural  from  the  common-sense  point  of  view. 

To  appreciate  this  "  miracle  of  life  "  ^  let  the  thinker  take 
his  stand  at  one  end  of  the  microscope,  while  beneath  the  other 
end  there  is  going  on  those  cosmic  processes  which  result  in 
the  evolution  of  the  living  cell.  Here  is  Nature  transcendino- 
her  other  works,  producing  something  quite  beyond  and  above 
what  she  has  done  before.  Here  is  the  natural  rising  to  su- 
pernatural heights  ;  but  on  this  new  level,  it  is  a  higher  order 
of  nature  still.  In  recognizing  this  nature  of  the  living  tree, 
as  known  to  the  chemical  and  biological  sciences,  there  is 
involved  no  contradiction  of  the  nature  of  the  same  tree,  as 
known  by  the  common  gardener.  This  new  scientific  knowl- 
edge gives,  indeed,  an  acquaintance  with  hitherto  unknown  and 
unsuspected  invisible  and  intangible  beings  and  forces.  These 
beings  and  forces,  by  their  obedience  to  law  and  by  their  dis- 
play of  an  immanent  teleology,  show  their  superior  spiritual 
and  self-like  character.     From  the  scientific  point  of  view,  the 

1  It  is  not  strange  that  Haeckel  has  called  his  latest  treatise  on  this  sub- 
ject, Das  Lebenswunder. 


NATURE  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL  271 

tree  now  appears  as  something  that  has  already  far  transcended 
its  old  nature  as  mere  tree.  Its  particular  being  is  now  seen 
to  be  only  one  among  an  infinite  number  of  manifestations  of 
the  larger  and  all-inclusive  Being  of  the  World. 

Thus  does  the  nature  of  every  Thing,  when  more  perfectly 
and  interiorly  understood,  rise  above  its  own  inferior  nature  ; 
but  in  thus  rising,  its  more  inclusive  conception  becomes,  not 
antitlietic  to,  but  comprehensive  of,  its  own  less  inclusive 
conception. 

Let  us  now  return  to  the  conclusion  which  we  have  been  il- 
lustrating. Every  being  in  the  whole  world,  as  this  world  is 
empirically  known,  must  have  its  nature  considered  from  an 
indefinite  number  of  points  of  view.  As  known  from  the  su- 
perior point  of  view,  its  whole  nature  appears  changed ;  but 
the  change  is  not  one  which  puts  its  new  nature  over  against 
its  old ;  its  superior  nature  does  not  oppose,  or  negate,  its  in- 
ferior. The  one  Thinj  reallij  has  these  various  natures^  as  as- 
pects of  its  one  nature  ;  and  no  thing  is  so  poor  as  not  to  share 
in  this  infinite,  and  infinitely  complex,  wealth  of  natures  rising 
above  natures,  but  all  having  their  ground  in  the  one  all- 
comprehending  Nature.  And  the  positive  sciences,  instead  of 
discovering  and  exposing  this  all-comprehending  Nature  in  its 
naked  simplicity,  are  compelled  to  clothe  It,  and  vail  It,  with 
garment  piled  upon  garment,  each  more  elaborately  wrought 
and  richly  ornamented. 

It  is  not  likely  that  any  advocate  of  the  view  which  modern 
science  takes  of  so-called  Nature,  "  writ  large,"  would  dispute 
what  has  Ijeen  s;iid  liitherto.  The  scientific  conception  of  what 
should  be  included  under  the  term  "natural"  is,  indeed,  now 
far  more  comprehensive  and  rich  than  it  has  ever  l>een  Ix^fore. 
And  just  on  this  very  account  it  is  claimed  that  the  natunil 
no  longer  needs  to  be  supplemented  by  the  supernatural  ;  that, 
indeed,  tlie  former  positively  excludes  the  latter.  This  claim 
could  Im?  justifiable  only  on  two  conditions.  Of  these  conditions, 
one  is  that  the  conception  of  Nature  shall  be  so  illogically  ex- 


272  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

panded  as  to  include  those  points  of  view  which  belong  more 
properly  to  the  conception  of  the  Supernatural ;  and  the  other 
is,  that  the  natural  and  the  supernatural  shall  be  regarded  as 
mutually  exclusive  spheres.  But  it  has  been  agreed  to  limit 
the  conception  of  the  natural  to  that  system  of  existences  and 
transactions  which  is  described,  and  descriptively  explained,  by 
the  positive  sciences.  We  cannot,  therefore,  be  satisfied  with 
such  a  metaphysics  of  the  chemico-physical,  biological,  and 
psychological  sciences,  as  either  unconsciously,  or  by  a  species 
of  illegitimate  smuggling,  provides  for  the  Supernatural  under 
cover  of  the  natural.  Our  reconciliation  of  the  factitious 
antithesis  of  the  two  conceptions  must,  the  rather,  be  open,  in- 
telligent, and  deliberate. 

Religion  cannot  dispense  with  the  conception  of  the  Super- 
natural. But  religion  cannot  afford  to  hold  this  conception 
in  antagonism  to  modern  science  and  philosophy.  We  seek  a 
reconciliation,  therefore,  in  some  larger  Idea  which  shall  include 
both  the  natural  and  the  supernatural,  in  harmony.  According 
to  this  larger  Idea,  every  existence  and  every  event  is  capable 
of  being  regarded  from  two  different  but  not  antithetic  points 
of  view  as  both  natural  and  supernatural.  This  is  only  to  say, 
indeed,  every  existence  and  every  event  must  be  so  regarded ; 
because  all  cosmic  beings,  processes,  forces,  and  happenings, 
however  they  may  be  explained  by  the  positive  sciences,  must 
also  be  regarded  as,  essentially  considered,  dependent  mani- 
festations of  the  Supernatural, — of  God. 

The  account  which  naturalism  gives,  therefore,  affords  no 
perfect  substitute  for  the  account  which  supernaturalism  offers ; 
the  account  which  supernaturalism  offers,  is  not  intended  to 
displace,  or  to  annul,  and  does  not  in  fact  contradict,  the  ac- 
count which  naturalism  gives.  The  totality  of  human  experi- 
ence, in  the  realm  of  scientific  endeavor,  and  in  the  realm  of 
ethical,  aesthetical,  and  religious  beliefs,  sentiments,  and  ideals, 
demands  the  satisfaction  afforded  by  both  points  of  view.  The 
Reality  which  this  experience  increasingly  apprehends,   and 


NATURE  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL      273 

dimly  comprehends,  is  an  infinite  sphere  of  Being, — vast, 
mysterious,  and  rich  enough  to  satisfy  all  demands.  Science 
may,  then,  say  to  religion :  "  If  He  is  not  here,  manifested  in 
these  things  and  these  souls,  whose  ways  of  behavior  and  his- 
tory of  development  I  am  studying,  and  striving  to  reduce  to 
order;  Where,  then,  is  your  God?"  and,  "How  shall  man 
know  either  that  He  is,  or  what  He  is  ?  "  And  religion  can  only 
answer :  "  He  is  here ;  and  He  is  known  as  immanent  in  these 
things  and  in  these  souls."  And  then,  in  its  turn,  religion  may 
say  to  science :  *'  Can  you  explain  the  unity  and  order  of  these 
things,  and  especially  the  experiences  of  these  souls,  without 
discovering  or  postulating  some  Principle  such  as  that  I  may 
reasonably  make  it  the  Object  of  my  admiration,  trust,  and 
love?"  Or  better:  "Show  me  your  natural  forces  and  the 
laws  of  their  working,  and  I  will  expound  to  you  the  power 
and  wisdom  of  my  God ;  tell  me  how,  out  of  the  Being  of  the 
World,  came  Christ  and  the  religion  of  Christ,  and  I  will  show 
you  why  I  take  toward  this  Being  the  attitude  of  a  loving  and 
forgiven  son." 

And,  indeed,  the  more  thoughtful  it  has  become,  the  more 
has  science  recognized  the  necessity  of  resorting  to  some  theory 
of  the  Supernatural,  as  immanent  in  Nature,  and  demanded  for 
the  completer  explanation  of  natural  phenomena.  In  liistory, 
the  larger  conceptions  of  the  world  have  always  tried  to  provide 
for  a  "something  more  "  than  could  be  caught  and  described 
in  terms  familiar  to  the  positive  sciences,  so  long  as  these  sci- 
ences felt  compelled  to  remain  within  the  limits  of  an  experi- 
ence that  assifjns  no  ontoloerical  value  to  the  beliefs  and  senti- 
ments  of  religion.  "  Nature "  is  tlierefore  conceived  of  as 
somehow  capable  of  separation  into  two  parts ;  one  of  these 
must  be  put  "  over"  the  other,  must  play  tbe  missing  part  of 
the  /??//?^r-natural.  Tliis  one  nature  is  after  all,  both  a  natura 
iiaturans  and  a  natura  naturafa.  It  iiu'ludes  some  active  uni- 
fying Principle  jus  well  as  ;in  obvious  complex  of  interrelated 
phenomena.     This  truth  is  virtually  admitted,  but  not  well  ex- 

IS 


274  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

pressed  by  such  statements  as  that  of  Professor  Le  Conte :  ^ 
"  To  the  deep  thinker,  now  and  always,  there  is  and  always  has 
been  the  alternative ; — materialism  or  theism.  God  operates 
Nature  or  Nature  operates  itself ;  but  evolution  puts  no  new 
phase  on  this  old  question."  It  is  indeed  true  that  evolution 
does  not  change  any  of  the  essential  factors  of  the  problem 
proposed  by  such  terms  as  Nature  and  the  Supernatural.  But 
the  problem  is  not  well  expressed  as  an  alternative  of  this  sort. 
The  World,  and  all  that  is  in  it,  is  always,  and  necessarily,  and 
by  virtue  of  its  very  conception,  both  natural  and  supernatural. 
It  is  capable,  on  the  one  hand,  of  being  looked  at  as  naturalism 
demands ;  but  its  more  complete  understanding  demands  that 
it  should  be  looked  at  in  another  way.  Looked  at  in  this  other 
way,  Nature  becomes  the  name  that  masks  the  immanency  of 
the  Divine  Will  and  Mind  in  all  the  cosmic  phenomena. 

It  is,  however,  when  we  come  to  consider  human  nature  in 
its  historical  development  that  tlie  merely  naturalistic  view 
reveals  its  special  and  most  marked  deficiencies.  For  the  his- 
tory of  humanity  is  replete  with  signs  of  a  presence  and  power 
that  is  above  nature,  in  the  narrower  meaning  of  this  term. 
The  student  of  history  feels  himself  compelled  to  admit  that 
there  are  "  hidden  influences  "  at  work  "  shaping  the  religious 
fortunes  of  mankind,"  which  "  cannot  be  wholly  accounted  for 
by  historical  investigation."  ^  To  the  same  conclusion,  writers 
like  Wellhausen,  Strauss,  and  others,  are  found  assenting, 
when,  on  making  a  cross-section  in  the  historical  evolution  of 
humanity,  they  have  recognized  two  somewhat  exclusive 
spheres  of  reality, — the  so-called  natural  and  the  so-called  su- 
pernatural. But  of  the  history  of  humanity,  as  well  as  of  so- 
called  physical  nature,  a  clear-sighted  philosophy  affirms  tliat 
it  is  all  capable  of  being  looked  upon  from  both  these  points  of 

1  See  the  chapter  on  "Nature  and  Spirit"  in  his  Theory  of  Religion;  and 
compare  the  chapters  on  "Matter,"  "Nature  and  Spirit,"  and  the  "World 
and  the  Absolute,"  in  the  author's  A  Theory  of  Reality. 

2  So  Jastrow,  The  Study  of  Religion,  p.  178/. 


NATURE  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL      275 

view.  In  this  field  of  research  the  distinction  exists  ;  but  it 
must  be  held  in  a  relative  and  shifting  way.  And  it  is  not  to  be  ap- 
plied by  picking  out  bits  of  histoiy  here  and  there ;  and  by  as- 
signing some  to  one  conception  exclusively,  and  some  to  the  other. 
The  distinction  is  indeed  permanent  and  important ;  but  its  ulti- 
mate intention  is  to  pay  respect  to  the  different  aspects,  as  re- 
garded from  different  points  of  view,  of  the  one  life  of  humanity. 
In  this  evolving  life  of  human  nature,  God,  the  Supernatural  is 
always  and  everywhere  immanent.  As  the  Abbe  de  Broglie,^ 
argues :  It  seems  a  strange  inconsistency  when  the  naturalistic 
school,  which  proposes  to  bring  everything  to  the  test  of  his- 
torical facts,  rejects  a  priori  and  often  with  scorn  all  those 
ideas  of  the  supernatural,  miracle,  divine  revelation,  etc.,  which 
liistory  shows  to  be  universally  spread  among,  and  tenaciously 
adhered  to  by  all  religious  peoples.  Further  examination 
usually  shows,  however,  some  provision  for  recognizing  these 
ideas  under  another  form  or  name.  And  ^Matthew  Arnold's 
"  Power  that  makes  for  righteousness,"  some  unifying  Force, 
or  resultant  of  ^wasz-spiritual  forces,  is  called  upon  to  perform 
the  same  gigantic  task  which  Baron  Bunsen  assigned  to  "  God 
in  History." 

Thus  by  the  naturalistic  party,  the  demand  to  enlarge  the 
scope  and  increase  the  efficiency  of  its  explanatory  principle  has 
been  met  by  expanding  and  intensifying  the  conception  of 
"Nature,"  '' tlie  Cosmos,"  "the  World,"  or  the  "Unknown 
Force  "  which,  however,  the  Universe  manifests  to  us.  In  its 
best  condition  of  development,  this  conception  is  made  to 
cover,  not  only  all  the  existences,  forces,  and  processes,  that 
are  "  natural  "  in  the  narrower  meaning  of  the  word,  but  also 
the  origin  and  history  of  the  human  race  regarded  as  the  ex- 
pression or  pnxluct  of  forces  that  are  also  "  natural  "  in  the 
widest  meaning  of  tlie  word.  Thus  Mother  Nature  is  con- 
ceived of  as  made  big,  strong,  and  wise  enough  to  bring  fortli 
from  her  wondj  all  that  has  Inicome  or  can  become,  objects  of 
*  Problemcs  ct  Conclusions  de  L'llistoirc  dcs  Religions,  p.  ix/. 


276  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

human  experience.  And  now  our  question  returns  upon  us  in 
other  forms,  but  in  essence  the  same.  All  experience  is  now- 
enfolded  in  ''  the  natural."  Outside  of  Nature,  or  over  or 
above  it,  nothing  real  or  even  imaginary  can  be  ;  and  whatever 
is  regarded  as  immanent  in  Nature  is  confessed  to  be  a  part  of 
It.  But  if  Nature  is  the  all-surrounding,  all-upholding,  all- 
producing  One,  where  now  is  the  place  for  the  Supern?it\iY'dl  ? 

To  this  question  the  reply  must  be  that  we  are  here  dealing 
with  a  species  of  logical  jugglery.  But  the  trick  is  not  hard  to 
discover.  For  the  extension  of  the  conception  of  the  natural 
to  such  dimensions  reveals  its  own  inherent  inconsistencies  by 
the  perpetual  tendency  to  break  up  again  into  two  parts ;  and 
each  of  these  parts  has  for  its  important  business,  the  reestab- 
lishing and  safeguarding  of  the  same  distinction  with  which, 
by  their  hasty  union,  the  conception  was  itself  constituted. 
This  distinction  between  the  natural  and  the  supernatural  was 
originally  introduced  in  order  to  contrast  "  the  manifested,"  or 
what  has  priority  and  superior  immediacy  and  certainty  from 
the  empirical  point  of  view,  with  what  has  the  logical  priority 
and  the  ontological  primacy  from  the  reflective  point  of  view. 
But  now  the  distinction  has  been  abolished  by  making  the 
whole  sphere  of  the  natural  equivalent  to  the  Absolute ;  in 
other  words,  the  conception  of  Nature  has  absorbed  the  concep- 
tion of  God.  In  this  way  the  mind  has  returned  to  the  stand- 
point of  atheism,  so  far  as  the  Divine  manifestation  in  the  cos- 
mic existences,  forces,  and  processes  is  concerned.  But  this 
conclusion  is  intolerable  to  the  religious  experience. 

For  religion,  I  repeat,  the  Supernatural  is  God ;  and  all  the 
so-called  natural  is  the  manifestation  of  his  immanent  Self. 
How,  then,  is  God,  the  Supernatural,  '*  over,"  or  '*  more  than," 
the  natural ;  when  these  figurative  expressions  are  translated 
in  terms  for  which  some  rational  meaning  and  ontological  value 
may  properly  be  claimed  ?  The  prefix  ''Super,''  when  wrongly 
interpreted,  does  indeed  set  the  World  and  God  into  relations 
of  antagonism  or  mutual  exclusiveness.     Yet  religion  certainly 


NATURE  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL  277 

demands  for  its  satisfaction  "  something  more  "  to  the  content 
of  the  Object  of  faith  and  worship  than  the  positive  sciences 
can  impart,  so  long  as  their  investigations  and  conclusions  with 
regard  to  the  Being  of  the  World  remain  within  their  proper 
spheres.  Even  the  vaguest  pantheistic  conception  of  the  natu- 
ral, like  that  attached  to  the  Chinese  word  Tdo^  is  brought  to 
a  rest  before  the  confession  :  "  There  was  something  undefined 
and  complete,  coming  into  existence  before  Heaven  and  Earth. 
How  still  it  was  and  formless,  standing  alone  and  undergoing 
no  change,  reaching  everywhere  and  in  no  danger  (of  being 
exhausted).  It  may  be  regarded  as  tlie  IVIother  of  all  things. 
I  do  not  know  its  name,  and  I  give  it  the  designation  of  the 
Tao  (The  Way).  ]\[aking  another  effort  to  give  it  a  name,  I 
call  it  The  Great."  ' 

The  doctrine  of  God  as  supernatural  assigns  to  Him  both 
logical  priority  and  ontological  primacy  in  contrast  ivith,  hut  not 
in  opposition  to,  the  natural.  Three  subordinate  conclusions — 
one  negative  and  two  positive — follow  from  this  doctrine. 
First :  Nature,  as  known  or  knowable  by  man,  is  not,  and  never 
can  be,  exhaustive  of  the  Supernatural.  In  order  to  satisfy 
the  religious  consciousness,  in  its  highest  and  its  profoundest 
reflections  upon  the  Object  of  its  faith,  there  is  always  to  be 
assumed  and  imagined,  something  "  over,"  or  "  yet-more-tlian," 
the  sum-total  of  all  its  manifestations,  as  inherent  in  the  es- 
sential reality  of  the  Pei-sonal  Al)Solute.  Doubtless  this  de- 
mand has  the  same  origin  as  that  which  refuses  to  regard  the 
essential  reality  of  man's  spirit  as  nothing  more  than  the  total 
"  stream  of  consciousness,"  so-calk*d.  Nature  as  known,  or 
conceivable,  is  finite  ;  God  is  infinite.  Nature,  as  known  or 
conceivable  now,  is  dependent  and  limited  :  God  is  alisolute. 
All  the  world's  l)eings  and  events,  in  all  their  historical  devel- 
opment, do  not  exhaust  the  Divine  power,  wisdom  and  good- 
ness. Man's  world  is  not,  and  never  can  become,  a  manifestiv- 
tion  of  all  that  (iod  really  is. 

>  iSucrcd  Hooks  of  the  Eftst,  XXXIX,  p.  07/. 


278  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

But  there  is  a  second  and  positive  conclusion  which  is  of 
greater  theoretical  and  practical  consequence.  God  is  the 
Supernatural  One,  since  Absolute  Personality  and  perfect 
Ethical  Spirit  is,  ever  and  essentially,  "  over,"  and  "  above," 
and  "  more  than,"  tlie  sum-total  of  its  own  particular  manifes- 
tations. The  personality  of  the  individual  man  even  is  more 
than  the  simple  aggregate  of  its  manifestations.  I  am  not  able 
to  take  myself  as  nothing  but  the  summing-up  of  the  events 
that  have  happened,  or  are  happening,  in  the  stream  of  con- 
sciousness I  call  mine.  In  some  good  meaning  of  the  words, 
I,  the  person,  am  "  over  "  them  all ;  I  am  "  more  than  "  are 
they  all.  But  this  superiority  of  the  human  Self  to  the  doings 
and  happenings  which  manifest  it  to  itself  and  to  others,  is  a 
dependent  being.  With  God  the  case  is  not  the  same.  The 
human  Self  is  dependent  upon  nature  :  this  is  the  scientific 
point  of  view,  which  does  not  however  contradict  the  convic- 
tions to  which  religion  appeals,  and  which  convince  us  that 
somehow  this  human  nature  partakes  of  the  essentially  super- 
natural.  But  God's  Personalit}^  is  not  dependent  upon  Nature, 
in  even  the  most  inclusive  meaning  of  that  term.  The  Abso- 
lute Self  is  not  only  for  man's  thinking  the  logical  prius  of 
the  natural ;  He  is  the  real  Ground  of  all  the  natural ;  Nature 
is  the  dependent  manifestation  of  Him. 

For,  third,  in  God,  as  Absolute  Will  and  Reason,  as  the  Su- 
pernatural One,  the  ultimate  source  and  explanation  of  all 
natural  existences  and  events  must  be  found.  In  the  lan- 
guage of  religion,  He  is  the  Creator,  Preserver,  and  Moral 
Ruler  of  all  things  and  of  all  souls.  To  use  figures  of  speech 
which  originally  expressed  spatial  relations,  the  super-nninrsil 
is  now  conceived  of  as  "  under,"  and  "  in,"  all  the  natural. 
He  is  the  Trigei\  the  Immanent  Power,  omnipresent  and  teleo- 
logical,  which  must  be  recognized  as  forming  an  important  part 
of  the  accounting  for  every  being  and  every  event.  For  every 
being  and  every  event — no  matter  how  firmly  set  it  may  seem 
to  be  in  that  complex  and  ever  shifting  framework  which  we 


NATURE  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL  279 

call  Nature,  nevertheless  bears  also  the  stamp  of  being  at  the 
same  time  a  significant  manifestation  of  the  Supernatural  One. 
To  be  a  part  of  the  natural,  as  seen  from  one  point  of  view,  is 
to  exist  "  in  God  " — that  is,  by  the  purposeful  Divine  Will — as 
beheld  with  the  insight  of  religion  and  philosophy,  when  looked 
upon  from  another  point  of  view. 

Such  a  view  of  the  relations  of  the  natural  and  the  super- 
natural raises  the  problem  of  the  Immanency  and,  at  the  same 
time,  the  Transcendency  of  God.  "  No  one,"  says  a  modern 
writer  on  this  subject,^  "  can  form  a  clear  conception  of  how 
the  inmianence  of  Deity  is  consistent  with  personality,  and  yet 
we  must  accept  both,  because  we  are  irresistibly  led  to  each  of 
these  by  different  lines  of  thought."  On  tlie  contrary,  only 
the  full  conception  of  a  Personal  Absolute  who  is  immanent  in 
all  tliat  system  of  beings  and  changes  which,  in  its  historical 
evolution,  corresponds  to  the  full  conception  of  "  Nature,"  can 
afford  the  best  available  explanation  of  the  total  experience  of 
the  race.  As  the  same  author  goes  on  to  say,  "  the  gradual 
individuation  of  the  universal  Divine  energy  reaches  complete- 
ness in  man ;  " — but  not  of  energy  alone,  but,  the  rather,  of 
energy  as  guided  by  ideas  in  the  realization  of  ends.  In  other 
words,  the  "  individuation  "  of  the  Absolute  Self  reaches  its 
highest  grade  of  realization  as  manifested  to  human  experi- 
ence, in  the  developed  selfhood  of  man.  This  is  the  conclu- 
sion with  which  philosophy  meets  and  satisfies  tlie  beliefs,  sen- 
timents, and  practical  needs,  of  the  religious  life  of  humanity. 

Can  God  be  conceived  of  as  both  immanent  and  transcen- 
dent? The  answer  to  this  question  depends,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  upon  tlie  meaning  atUiched  to  these  terms.  No  :  if  by 
the  very  terms  employed  we  mean  to  affirm  conceptions  or 
judgments  respecting  the  Divine  Being  and  its  relation  to  the 
world  which  are  inherently  self-contradictory.  Any  original 
inconsistency  and  confusion  of  thought  cannot  Ix*  anniilhMl, 
but  is  rather  made  obvious,  by  tlie  sulwequent  attempt  to  unite 

•  Prof.  I^  Conte,  Evolution  iiud  it.s  Relation  to  Religious  Thought,  p.  31J. 


280  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  two  terms  in  a  common  judgment  of  a  wider  extent  and 
richer  content.  Yes  :  in  case  we  are  ready  to  take  to  our  con- 
fidence the  profound  truths  embodied  in  both  these  terms  ;  and, 
after  interpreting  them  in  the  light  of  these  truths,  combine 
them  in  a  higher  and  harmonious  conception.^  This  confidence 
must  be  gained  in  the  face  of  the  consideration  that  the  terms, 
"  immanency  "  and  *'  transcendency,"  are  in  their  Yery  consti- 
tution figurative.  Nor  is  the  confidence  disturbed  by  the  ad- 
mission that  we  have  no  immediate  experience  which  can  be 
transferred  uncritically  to  the  Absolute,  in  order  to  illustrate 
just  how  such  relations  to  the  world  are  realized,  as  united 
in  Him. 

The  history  of  man's  religious  development,  especially  when 
viewed  in  the  light  of  his  reflective  thought  upon  his  own  re- 
ligious experience,  shows  how  he  has  more  and  more  satisfac- 
torily dealt  wdth  the  problem  of  uniting  in  a  harmonious  con- 
ception the  immanency  and  the  transcendency  of  God.  In  this 
advance  toward  harmony  he  has  followed  suggestions  and  an- 
alogies derived  from  a  growing  knowledge  of  himself  as  a  per- 
son ;  and  of  his  own  changing  relations  to  other  persons  and 
things.  In  its  most  intimate  form,  the  experience  of  a  Self 
is  just  this: — a  will  and  mind  somehow  dwelling  ivitliin  and  yet 
ruling  over — with  a  consciousness  of  superiority  to — an  ani- 
mated body.  From  this  experience  arises  the  pantheistic  con- 
ception which  represents  the  Divine  Being  as  Atman,  or  Parat- 
man  ;  that  is,  as  the  Supreme  Soul,  manifested  in  and  through 
the  material  universe  and  the  world  of  finite  spirits.  Such  a 
conception  does  indeed  strike  the  keynote  to  an  eternal  and  in- 
finitely valuable  truth.  But  the  tune  played  upon  it  is  not 
harmonious  and  true  to  all  the  most  profound  and  lasting  sen- 
timents and  thouG^hts  of  man.     Its  failure  is  due  to  the  fact 

1  Compare  the  view  of  Dr.  Busse  (Philosophie  und  Erkenntniss-theorie) 
who,  while  holding  to  the  view  that  God  is  both  immanent  and  transcendent, 
declares  we  shall  never  be  able  to  explain  how  this  can  be  so.  But  here  all 
depends  upon  what  is  meant  by  "explain." 


NATURE  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL  281 

that  the  conception  of  the  Self,  or  Supreme  Soul,  is  so  incom- 
plete and  inadequate.  By  providing  a  more  perfect  Ideal, 
Theism  attempts  to  furnish,  and  thus  to  validate,  if  it  does  not 
comprehensively  explain,  both  the  immanency  and  the  tran- 
scendency of  God.  So  often  as  the  conception  of  God  as  Per- 
sonal Absolute  and  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  gets  driven  from  any 
portion  of  the  space  or  time  wliich  science  needs  for  the  opera- 
tion of  its  cosmic  forces  and  cosmic  processes,  religion  brings 
the  conception  back  and  plants  it  yet  more  firmly  witliin  more 
extended  areas  of  the  world's  space  and  time.  And  when  re- 
ligious experience  comes  to  a  recognition  of  its  own  truest 
meaning  and  most  invulnerable  postulates,  it  affirms  that  in  all 
natural  existences,  forces,  and  changes,  God  is  immanent. 
The  world,  which  truly  and  yet  from  a  partial  and  lower  point 
of  view  appears  to  science  as  a  complex  of  such  forces,  is  in- 
deed his  immanent,  manifested  Will.  Its  uniform  sequences, 
its  laws  so-called,  and  its  order,  as  all  these  are  observed  and 
inferred  by  science,  are  the  immanent,  manifested  Reason  of 
God. 

This  dependent  manifestation  of  an  immanent  Will  and  Rea- 
son, as  known  to  man,  is  a  process  in  time ;  it  is  an  evolution 
which,  so  far  as  the  positive  sciences  can  discover  its  origin, 
destiny,  and  significance,  comes,  we  know  not  Whence,  and 
goes  we  know  not  Whither — with,  we  know  not  what  final 
Purpose,  or  Wherefore,  to  secure  its  goal.  Religion,  with  it^ 
beliefs,  liopes,  and  experience  of  facts,  joins  ethics  and  aesthet- 
ics, to  discover  and  establish  a  confidence  in  the  realization  of 
the  ideals  common  to  them  all.  It  affirms,  therefore,  that  the 
Will  and  Reason  immanent  in  and  through  this  cosmic  process 
must  be  conceived  of  as  a  presiding  and  over-ruling  Pei-sonal 
Spirit.  Thus  God  is  conceived  of  as  both  immanent  and  ti-.in- 
scendent.  Because  lie  is  immanent,  we  know  that  He  is,  and 
what  He  is,  a.s  manifested  in  Nature.  Because  He  is  tran- 
scendent, we  Ix^'lieve  that  His  final  purposes  of  (Jood,  which 
are  more  and  more  clearly  revealed  in  the  evolution  of  the  eth- 


282  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ical,  sesthetical,  and  religious  sentiments  and  ideals  of  the  race, 
will  finally  be  realized.  "  All  is  well,"  says  religion,  "  because 
God  is  both  in  and  over  the  World."  "  God  in  all,"  and  "  God 
over  all,"  are  both  true  ;  neither  is  antithetic  to  the  other.  In 
a  word :  It  is  the  conception  of  an  Absolute  Self,  who  is  perfect 
.Ethical  Spirit,  which  unites  and  harmonizes  the  two  otherwise 
conflicting  conceptions  of  the  immanency  and  the  transceiidency 
of  God. 

Approaches  to  the  true  doctrine  of  the  relations  of  the  nat- 
ural and  the  supernatural  have  been  made  by  all  the  greater 
religions  of  the  world.  Indeed,  the  germs  of  the  doctrine  exist 
in  the  very  nature  of  religion  itself,  even  in  the  form  which  its 
beliefs  and  feelings  take  at  the  stage  of  unreflecting  spiritism. 
Judaism  was  especially  productive  of  this  thought,  deemed  by 
so  many  modern  thinkers  "  too  good  to  be  true."  The  Old 
Testament,  in  its  choicest  utterances  about  the  relations  of 
natural  existences  and  events  to  the  presence,  power,  and 
moral  concerns  of  Deity,  although  it  uses  only  figurative 
terms,  freely  expresses  the  belief  in  both  His  immanency  and 
His  transcendency. 

Nothing  can  exceed  the  dignity,  beauty,  and  sublimity  of 
Jesus'  teaching  and  practical  attitude  with  reference  to  natural 
objects  and  natural  events.  He  always  expresses  the  unwaver- 
ing conviction  that  the  world  is  God's  world,  and  the  clear  and 
constant  consciousness  that  the  "son  of  man"  is  also  God's 
son.  Indeed,  so  true  is  this  that  the  conception  of  God  which 
Jesus  reveals  becomes — though  only  in  a  secondary,  and  yet 
legitimate  way — a  revelation  of  the  real  nature  of  the  physical 
universe.  It  is  to  his  doctrine  of  Providence,  as  producing 
and  justifying  the  filial  spirit  in  its  perfection  toward  all  the 
dealings  of  God  through  natural  means,  that  an  appeal  must 
be  made,  if  the  question  is  raised  as  to  what  Jesus  thought  of 
the  relations  between  nature  and  the  Supernatural  One.  The 
true  son  of  the  Heavenly  Father  may  always  be  so  confident  of 
his  Father's  presence  in,  and  power  over,  all  earthly  existences 


NATURE  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL      283 

and  events,  as  not  to  be  disturbed  by  anxious  and  corroding 
cares  about  his  food,  clothing,  and  other  similar  interests.  Let 
him  seek  first  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  his  righteousness,  and 
all  these  things  shall  be  provided  for  him.  For  all  nature  is 
but  his  Father's  garment,  too  thin  even  to  vail  the  indwelling 
Divine  presence ;  and  nothing  can  happen,  which  is  not  the 
manifestation  of  the  Father's  wise  and  loving  "Will ;  or  which 
is  prejudicial  to  tlie  real  good  of  those  who  lovingly  will  as  He 
wills.  The  world  of  men — human  nature,  too — is  God's  child  ; 
it  is  wandering,  indeed,  in  ignorance  and  forgetfulness  of  the 
Father's  love  and  of  the  natural  relations  which  bind  it  to 
God  ;  but  it  needs  only  the  knowledge  and  the  effectual  work- 
ing of  the  immanent  Divine  Spirit  to  realize  that  universal 
ethical  unity  of  man  wdth  God  which  it  is  the  mission  of  Jesus 
to  bring  about. 

The  task  of  adjusting  this  conception  of  the  Founder  of 
Christianity,  respecting  the  relations  of  the  natural  and  tlie 
supernatural,  to  the  facts  of  science  and  of  human  history  has, 
indeed,  been  most  difficult;  and  it  has  only  very  imperfectly 
been  performed  or  even  undertaken.  The  early  Apologists 
tried  to  unite  the  thoughts  of  Jesus  with  those  of  Greek  phi- 
losophy. They  held  in  general  that  God  created  the  world  a 
fair  and  orderly  whole  for  the  sake  of  man.  Some  of  them 
went  so  far  as  to  express  the  opinion  that  beautiful  natural  ob- 
jects are  maintained  only  for  the  sake  of  Cliristians.  "  I  have 
no  doubt,"  says  Aristides,'  *'that  the  eartli  continues  to  exist 
only  on  account  of  the  prayers  of  Christians."  It  was  tlie 
Logos  doctrine  wliich  undertook  a  theoretical  reconciliation 
Ixjtween  Jesus'  faith  in  God,  the  Fatlier,  as  botli  in  and  over 
the  world,  and  the  ideal  of  (jreek  sages  and  philosopliei"S  who 
thought  of  Absolute  Reason  as  manifested  in  control  of  the 
cosmic  processes  and  cosmic  events.  In  later  Christian  tliouglit 
tlie  controlling  conception  has  l)een,  as  it  was  in  the  pre- 
Christian  Jewish  view,  that  God  willed  the  world  for  ideally 

>  Apol.  [Syriuc  Version]  16. 


284  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

good  ends.  Meantime  science  and  philosophy  have  been  con- 
stantly employed  upon  a  basis  of  enlarging  and  more  certain 
experience,  in  the  effort  to  develop  the  conception  of  the  ex- 
tent, complexity,  and  mystery  of  these  cosmic  processes  and 
cosmic  events,  both  as  respects  their  ultimate  origin  and  their 
ultimate  significance.  But  still,  and  with  no  relaxing  of  tenac- 
ity, as  Sabatier  has  well  said  ^ :  *'  For  piety,  the  laws  of  Nature 
which  have  since  then  been  revealed  to  us  in  their  sovereign  con- 
stancy, become  the  immediate  expression  of  the  will  of  God." 
Or,  to  employ  the  more  comprehensive  statement  of  Tiele :  "^ 
"  It  is  Christianity  which  unites  the  two  opposite  doctrines  of 
transcendency  and  immanency  by  its  ethical  conception  of  the 
Fatherhood  of  God,  which  embraces  both  the  exaltation  of  God 
above  man  and  man's  relationship  with  God."  Both  these 
statements,  however,  apply  more  directly  to  the  union  of  the 
Divine  immanency  and  transcendency  in  human  history.  How 
this  union  may  be  most  fitly  conceived  as  applicable  to  the  to- 
tality of  the  cosmic  existences,  processes,  and  events  has  now 
been  sufficiently  explained. 

In  the  interests  of  religious  feeling,  two  questions  regarding 
the  more  precise  relations  of  Nature  and  the  Supernatural  re- 
quire further  consideration.  To  regard  all  human  experience 
in  this  "  wholesale  "  fashion,  so  to  say,  seems  at  first  sight  to 
offend  the  religious  consciousness.  For  this  consciousness  re- 
cognizes the  Divine  presence  and  superintending  providence  as 
being  greatest  and  most  valuable  when  manifested  in  certain 
select  kinds  of  existences  or  certain  preferred  classes  of  events. 
These  are  such  existences  and  events  as  seem  most  essential  to 
the  truthfulness  and  efficiency  of  religion  itself.  Indeed,  there  is 
a  constant  tendenc}^  in  even  the  greater,  more  liberal,  and  genial 
forms  of  religfious  belief,  to  restrict  the  recoofnition  of  the  Divine 
activity  to  special  cases ;  and  thus  to  exclude  God,  as  it  were, 
from  any  immediate  participation  in  those  beings  and  happen- 

1  Esquisse  d'une  Philosophie  de  la  Religion,  p.  88. 

2  Elements  of  the  Science  of  Religion,  First  Series,  p.  209. 


NATURE  AND  TPIE  SUPERNATURAL  285 

iDgs  which  appear  to  have  little  relation  to  the  interests  of  faith 
and  of  practical  piety.  In  this  way,  the  one  world,  which 
should  be  for  faith  and  piety,  all  of  it  God's  world,  is  di- 
vided into  two  worlds,  whose  existences  and  processes  run  on 
in  some  sort  of  independence  of  each  other.  God  is  recognized 
as  present  and  interested  in  one  of  these  two  worlds, — namely, 
that  in  which  faith  and  piety  find  grounds  for  their  existence 
and  growth ;  but  the  other  world  is,  at  best,  since  its  creation, 
a  piece  of  self-dependent  and  self-adjusting  mechanism ;  if  in- 
deed it  is  not  the  devil's  own  world.  From  this  point  of  view 
the  problem  of  evil  reappears,  with  all  its  gloom  and  weight  of 
difficulties  ;  and  with  it,  returns  the  thought  of  limiting  the  im- 
manency and  transcendency  of  God  in  order  to  save  the  perfec- 
tion of  his  moral  and  spiritual  Being.  His  manifestation 
belongs  only  to  that  part  of  the  sum-total  of  the  cosmic  exis- 
tences, processes,  and  history,  which  seems  fair  and  good  to 
those  creatures  of  His,  whom  he  invites  to  have  their  faith  and 
hope  in  Him. 

The  attempt  to  treat  rationally  the  problem  of  God's  relations 
to  the  world  can  meet  with  no  more  disastrous  repulse  than 
the  recurrence,  in  the  form  just  stated,  of  the  distinction  be- 
tween Nature  and  the  Supernatural.  For  it  must  never  be 
forgotten  that  if  we  expect  to  base  our  evidence  for  tlie  being 
and  attributes  of  God  on  our  experience  of  the  worhl  at  all, 
we  must  take  the  world  as  it  actually  is,  and  not  as  we  vainly 
imagine  it  ought  to  liave  been.  And  if  we  aim  consistently  to 
establish  the  doctrine  of  One  Alone  God,  having  the  attributes 
which  relate  him  essentially  and  eternally  to  man's  total  ex- 
perience, we  cannot  proceed  with  this  aim  after  having  re- 
jected from  consideration  the  larger  part  of  this  experience. 
If  faith  and  piety  exclude  God  from  such  portion  of  his 
world  as  linite  understanding  does  not  readily  recognize  to  be 
agreeable  to  their  ideals  ;  then  faith  and  piety  cut  themselves 
olT  from  their  own  very  roots.  The  attitude  of  true  religion 
toward  the  world  is  essentially  just  the  reverse  of  all  this.     It 


286  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

believes  in  God  as  the  Ideal-Real;  and  it  trusts  God,  in  his 
own  good  way  and  time,  to  realize  those  ideals  which  He  has 
himself  placed  and  nourished  in  the  history  of  the  race. 

Without  retreating  one  hair's  breadth,  then,  from  the  posi- 
tion which  recognizes  the  abiding  presence  and  power  of  what 
religion  regards  as  supernatural  in  what  science  calls  the 
natural,  and  in  all  the  world's  history,  it  is  possible  to  advance 
certain  considerations  which  tend  to  alleviate  the  distress,  and 
quiet  the  doubts,  of  a  too  weak  unreflective  faith.  And,  first : 
When  it  is  said  that  God  is  equally  immanent  and  transcendent 
in  all  his  relations  to  all  the  world's  existences  and  events,  or 
that  all  the  natural  is  also  equally  super-natural^  the  terms  are 
not  used  in  a  quantitative  or  mathematical  way.  Neither  is 
their  use  designed  to  deny  all  qualitative  distinctions  in  the 
beings  and  events  that  affect  the  religious  experience  of  the 
race.  Strictly  speaking,  the  word  "  equality,"  in  its  mathe- 
matical meaning,  in  connection  with  the  discussion  of  this 
problem,  is  scarcely  applicable  at  all.  With  respect  to  the 
omnipotence,  or  limitless  power  of  God,  had  we  the  data,  we 
might  assume  to  measure  amounts  of  the  Divine  immanency, 
in  the  cosmic  beings  and  processes.  To  say  that  there  is  more 
of  the  energy  of  the  Being  of  the  World  present  in  the  move- 
ment of  the  sun  than  emanates  from  so  many  pounds  of  some 
radio-active  substance,  might  be  of  interest  to  physics ;  but  it 
would  not  enlighten,  or  change  the  standpoint  of,  an  intelligent 
piety.  God's  power  is  in  the  radium,  the  dewdrop,  the  grain 
of  wheat,  the  beating  human  heart  or  pulsating  human  brain, 
as  truly  as  in  the  moving  solar  system  or  in  the  distant  star. 
For  all  of  the  energy  which  the  physico-chemical  sciences,  first 
differentiate  and  then  endeavor  to  integrate  under  a  theory 
of  conservation  and  correlation,  the  reflections  of  faith  and  piety 
regard,  and  rightly,  as  the  manifestation  of  the  everywhere 
present  Divine  Will. 

Doubtless,  too,  it  is  possible  to  speak  of  God's  wisdom  being 
displayed  more  abundantly  in  some  things  and  some  events 


NATURE  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL  287 

than  in  other  things  and  events.  But  this  attempt  to  measure 
the  amount  of  the  Divine  wisdom  is  likely  itself  to  turn  out 
folly.  To  intelligent  piety  the  profoundly  mysterious  archi- 
tectonic skill  of  the  Divine  Woiid-builder  is  no  less  impressive, 
— and  it  is  more  available,  near  at  hand,  and  verifiably  certain, 
— in  the  evolution  of  the  impregnated  ovum  than  in  that  of  the 
solar  system.  Any  one  can  see  the  former  under  the  micro- 
scope to-day  ;  astronomy  knows  little  that  is  certain  about  the 
latter.  But  especially  in  considering  the  history  of  human 
events,  as  bearing  on  the  question  of  less  and  more  of  the  pres- 
ence and  power  of  God,  it  is  well  to  avoid  an  unseemly  arro- 
gance in  one's  attempts  at  measurement.  For  it  is  in  this  history 
that  small  beginnings  are  pregnant  with  great  issues  ;  and  that 
seemingly  little  deeds  on  the  part  of  man  work  out  the  most 
significant  and  tremendous  of  the  Divine  plans.  It  is  this  fact 
which  gives  force  to  the  pantheistic  representation  of  the  Being 
of  the  World  as  dealing  with  men  after  the  fashion  of  the  chess- 
player with  his  pawns  : — 

"  Hither  and  thither  moves,  and  checks,  and  slays, 
And  one  by  one  back  in  the  closet  lays." 

But  it  is  the  same  fact  which  the  religion  of  Christ  uses  to 
illustrate  the  confidence  of  the  pious  soul  that  he  who  wills 
the  fall  of  the  sparrow  is  also  immanent  in,  and  transcendent 
over,  every  event  in  the  life  of  man.  Moreover,  the  human 
mind  is  never  so  placed  as  to  see  what  is  really  great  or  really 
small,  in  this  vast,  intricate,  and  ever-growing  network  of 
Iniman  history.  If  a  dream  had  not  warned  Joseph  to  escape 
with  the  young  child  into  Egy[)t  from  Herod's  murderous 
wrath,  what  would  have  become  of  the  Founder  of  Christianity? 
If  some  cliance  biid,  driven  by  unconscious  impulse  or  wafted 
by  a  momentary  breeze,  had  flown  to  left  rather  than  to  right, 
would  Cu'sar  have  crossed  the  Rubicon  and  the  Roman  World 
have  l)een  prepared  for  the  spread  of  tlie  Christian  faith? 

Undoubtedly,  certain    problems    which  arrange   themselves 
under  the  difTerent  main  tlieories  as  to  the  relations  between 


288  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  natural  and  the  supernatural,  and  whose  partial  solution 
depends  upon  the  method  adopted  for  reconciling  the  concep- 
tions of  immanency  and  transcendency,  are  exceedingly  diffi- 
cult even  to  state  in  a  way  satisfactory  to  religious  experience. 
How  can  God  be  said  to  be  immanent  in,  and  transcendent 
over,  all  the  processes  and  events  in  a  world  where  so  much  of 
ugliness  and  sin  abound  ?  As  has  already  been  said,  this 
question  raises  again  the  dark  problem  of  evil ;  it  can,  there- 
fore, only  be  answered  in  the  same  partial  and  tentative  way 
which  is  becoming  for  finite  knowledge  in  the  face  of  this 
problem.  But  the  doctrine  which  regards  all  cosmic  existences 
and  events  as  a  dependent  manifestation  of  the  Personal  Ab- 
solute, does  not  in  any  way  impair  those  facts  of  experience 
which  testify  to  the  myriad  forms  in  which  this  manifestation 
takes  place.  The  Supernatural,  in  and  over  the  natural,  is  no 
dull  monotone  which  prevents  the  listening  ear  from  recogniz- 
ing the  other  tones  that  must  all  blend  together  to  make  the 
harmony.  God  is  immanent  "  in  "  different  things,  in  differ- 
ent ways  ;  and  God  is  transcendent  "  over "  different  events, 
in  different  forms  of  control. 

The  faith  of  both  science  and  religion — a  faith  that  is  in- 
creasingly confirmed  by  accumulating  experience — recognizes 
the  presence  of  a  certain  wonderful  and  mysterious  beauty  in 
what  seems  ugly  from  other  points  of  view  and  to  eyes  which 
have  less  of  penetration  and  of  insight.  The  broader  studies 
in  ethics  are  more  and  more  emphasizing  the  place  which 
tragedy  holds  in  the  moral  and  sesthetical  evolution  of  the 
race.  In  this  way  the  ugly  and  the  painful  appear,  the  rather, 
as  the  necessary  elements  and  factors — however  mysterious  in 
their  origin  and  incomprehensible  in  respect  of  their  complete 
significance — of  a  system,  such  as  the  world  is,  on  its  way  to 
the  realization  of  a  far  distant  but  divinely  beautiful  and 
blessed  end.  This  does  not,  indeed,  enable  us  to  call  pain 
pleasure,  or  to  do  away  with  the  distinction  between  the  ugly 
and  the  beautiful.     But  it  does  lend  support  to  the  faith  which 


NATURE  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL  289 

regards  the  means  in  the  light  of  the  final  accomplishment. 
Thus  even  pain  becomes  welcomed  as  instrumental  for  a  higher 
good;  and  the  ugly  appears,  as  either  the  imperfectly  developed 
on  its  way  to  perfection,  or  as  the  humbler  servant  of  some 
more  obviously  grand  and  beautiful  object  in  the  vast  economy. 
The  lowly  forms  of  life  have  the  place — most  interesting,  botli 
to  the  moral  and  to  the  artistic  sentiment — of  scavengers,  or 
scrubs,  in  the  royal  palace,  or  court,  or  "  mews  ;  "  they  may 
seem  really  good  and  beautiful  themselves,  when  separated 
from  the  fictitious  associations  with  Avhich  they  have  been  acci- 
dentally bound  up,  as  seen  by  the  nearsighted  eyes  of  the 
superficial  looker-on. 

How  God  can  be  "  immanent  in  "  sinful  human  nature,  and 
also  *'  transcendent  over  "  the  world  in  which  sin  abounds,  is, 
indeed,  tlie  most  difficult  problem  for  reflective  thinking  in  its 
effort  so  to  adjust  the  Divine  relations  to  this  world  as  at  the 
same  time  to  satisfy  the  speculative  reason  and  the  ethico- 
religious  consciousness.  Christianity  especially  (but  all  the 
other  greater  religions  also  in  some  degree)  gives  the  answer 
of  faith  to  this  problem  in  its  doctrine  of  God  as  the  Moral 
Ruler  and  Redeemer  of  the  world.  In  these  other  connections, 
therefore,  we  shall  have  abundant  occasion  to  consider  the 
subject  again. 

19 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII 

THEISM  AND   EVOLUTION 

The  discussion  of  the  positions  taken  by  the  various  theistic 
theories,  and  by  the  equally  various  theories  of  evolution  with 
reference  to  Nature  and  the  Supernatural,  if  pursued  with  the 
intent  to  adjust  the  claims  of  both,  requires  that  we  should 
recall  what  has  already  been  said  regarding  the  relations  of 
science  and  religious  experience.^  It  was  then  found  that  in 
their  aims,  methods,  satisfactions,  and  benefits  to  humanity, 
the  scientific  and  the  religious  points  of  view  are,  indeed, 
notably  different.  In  all  these  regards  science  and  religion 
are  often  so  antithetic  as  not  to  seem  reconcilable  by  any  con- 
siderations which  shall  command  the  fields  of  experience 
legitimately  assigned  to  both.  In  their  historical  development, 
too,  they  have  almost  constantly  been  engaged  in  conflict.  At 
no  age  of  the  world  has  this  conflict  between  science  and  re- 
ligion been  more  fiercely  and  intelligently  waged  than  between 
modern  Theism  and  Modern  Evolution. 

In  spite  of  these  facts,  however,  it  was  also  found  tliat  the 
fundamental  psychological  relations  of  science  and  religion  are 
such  as  to  make  it  impossible  that  either  should  displace  the 
other  from  the  confidence  or  the  culture  of  mankind.  Nor  can 
they  themselves  be  satisfied  to  remain  in  the  attitude  of  antag- 
onism and  hostility  toward  each  other.  For  man  is  one  ;  human 
nature  is  at  the  same  time  both  scientific  and  religious  in  the 
most  serious  activities  and  most  permanent  needs  of  its  com- 
plex constitution.     Therefore  the  ideal,  and  the  morally  and 

1  Vol.  I,  chap.  XVII. 


THEISM  AND  EVOLUTION  291 

aesthetically  correct,  relations  of  science  and  religion,  flow  from 
that  unity  of  the  spirit  which  seeks  the  one  truth,  by  whatever 
paths  of  experience  it  may  be  reached.  The  history  of  every 
fierce  conflict  between  the  two  contains,  in  fact  and  as  an  impor- 
tant part,  a  narrative  of  the  attempt  to  terminate  the  conflict  by 
the  discovery  and  adoption  of  some  common  principle  which 
is  discoverable  from  a  higher  point  of  view. 

The  characteristic  scientific  tenet  of  the  last  half-century 
is  Evolution.  The  genetic  point  of  view  has,  indeed,  been 
taken,  from  which  to  regard  the  series  of  cosmic  phenomena, 
ever  since  man  began  to  reflect  upon  nature  or  upon  his  own 
life.  That  man  and  things  grow  is  by  no  means  a  foreign  or 
uninteresting  observation  for  the  savage  mind.  Indeed,  for 
the  species  to  secure  good,  and  to  escape  evil,  it  is  quite  im- 
perative that  he  should  possess  the  knowledge  that  both  tilings 
and  men  develop,  and  how  they  develop.  The  religious  con- 
sciousness notes  this  with  a  peculiar  stress  of  interest ;  for 
whatever  grows  is  most  certainly  alive,  and  life  is  preemi- 
nently a  manifestation  of  the  Divine  to  man.  iNIoreover,  con- 
jectures as  to  derivation  from  the  gods,  and  as  to  change  and 
increase  by  reason  of  the  indwelling  or  down-coming  divine 
presence,  characterize  the  cruder  religious  theories  devised  to 
account  for  the  most  ordinary  experiences.  Thus  the  history 
of  religious  mythology  and  speculation  is  strewn  witli  wrecks 
of  childish  narratives,  or  more  elaborate  attempts  to  show  how, 
through  successive  generative  acts,  or  by  emanation  or  unfol- 
ding, an  impartation  of  divine  qualities  to  the  present  world  of 
things  and  men  can  1x3  traced  backward  to  a  I  )ivine  Source. 
Theories  of  development,  from  lx)th  the  religious  and  the  non- 
religious  points  of  view,  are  sure  to  follow  upon  any  consid- 
erable reflection  over  the  most  patent  facts  of  experience. 
And  development  is  even  a  more  import<int  conception  for 
religion  than  for  science. 

The  peculiar  excellencies  of  the  modern  theories  of  evolu- 
tion are  due  to  their  greater  success  in  building  upon  facts  of 


292  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

observation  and  experiment ;  and  to  the  thoroughness  and 
subtlety  of  the  processes  of  reasoning  which  have  carried  them 
far  beyond  the  limits  of  possible  observation  and  experiment. 
These  very  elements  of  success,  however,  have  not  infrequently 
served  as  pitfalls  into  which  their  advocates  have  fallen.  This 
is  true  even  within  the  fields  where  empirical  methods  are  most 
readily  and  surely  applicable.  But  it  is  more  extensively  and 
disastrously  true  within  fields  where  such  methods  are  more 
strictly  limited  or  nearly  impossible ;  and  where  figures  of 
speech,  which  have  at  least  a  verifiable  and  definable  meaning 
in  biology,  are  employed  to  enforce  theories  of  origins  and  of 
relations  to  which  they  have  really  little  or  no  valid  applica- 
tion. Thus  it  has  come  about  that  scientific  (sic)  guesses  as 
to  the  method,  order,  and  laws  of  evolution  are  not  much  less 
numerous  or  conjectural  than  are  religious  cosmogonies  or 
theological  theories  of  creation. 

Really  admirable  results  are,  however,  emerging  from  this 
last  half-century  of  conflict  between  Theism  and  Evolution. 
The  application  of  the  genetic  and  historical  method  to  the 
study  of  man's  religious  life  and  progress  has  been  peremptorily 
demanded  in  the  name  of  all  the  modern  sciences.  While  look- 
ing on  its  alleged  facts  in  the  statical  and  unhistorical  way, 
and  considering  its  beliefs  and  dogmas  as  a  long  ago  finished 
and  unchanging  but  priceless  possession,  religion  found  itself 
totally  unable  to  compete  with  science  in  the  unequal  strife  for 
enlightened  credence  and  sincere  devotion.  It  was  thus  forced 
to  define  itself  in  the  light  of  the  same  conception  of  develop- 
ment. And  now,  after  agonies  of  fear,  urging  it  on  to  agonies 
of  industry  and  sweat,  religion  is  beginning  to  reap  an  increase 
of  reward  in  its  ability  to  defend  the  view,  that  whatever  the 
positive  sciences  may  discover  about  the  details  of  the  world's 
history,  the  contention  of  Theism  still  holds  good;  for  the 
mind  which  takes  the  attitude  of  a  reasonable  piety,  the  world's 
history  is  the  history  of  the  progressive  Divine  Self-manifes- 
tation. 


THEISM  AND  EVOLUTION  293 

Meantime,  science  itself,  especially  as  its  utterances  come 
through  the  pens  and  the  speech  of  its  more  mature  and  cautious 
students,  is  growing  more  genial  toward  the  reasonable  beliefs, 
the  purer  sentiments,  and  the  more  valuable  practices  of  re- 
ligion ;  as  well  as  also,  perhaps,  less  sure  of  its  own  ability  to 
furnish  explanations  that  shall  not  call  for  yet  more  funda- 
mental explanatory  principles,  or  that  shall  not  themselves  seem 
to  include,  in  the  form  of  concealed  postulates,  the  very  things 
which  most  need  to  be  explained.  By  tlie  time,  then,  that  tlie 
new  science  has  agreed  upon  its  most  approved  theory  of  evolu- 
tion, the  prospect  is  good  tliat  theistic  religion  will  be  ready  to 
accord  tliis  theory  a  cordial  reception,  and  to  regard  it  as  a 
grateful  tribute  to  the  incomprehensible  majesty,  power,  wis- 
dom, and  goodness  of  God. 

At  the  present  time,  two  forms  of  evolution  appear  which, 
when  carefully  examined  and  consistently  thought  through  to 
a  conclusion,  stand  in  distinctly  different  relations  to  the 
theistic  conception  of  the  world  as  a  dependent  manifestation 
of  God.  One  of  these  is  an  ontological  theory,  a  system  of 
metaphysics,  wliich  virtually  claims  to  make  evolution  self- 
explanatory,  in  a  form  to  exclude  the  unifying  Principle  of  an 
absolute,  self-conscious,  and  rational  Will.  This  is  Evolution 
as  antithetic  to  Theism.  It  is  a  theory  of  the  development  of 
realities,  stated  in  terms  that  contradict  the  religious  theory  of 
the  nature  of  Ultimate  Reality.  The  other  form  of  tlie  evolu- 
tionary hypothesis  aims,  the  rather,  at  being  a  descriptive  his- 
tory; — or,  if  the  term  is  employed  with  a  properly  restricted 
significance,  a  science — of  how  the  different  existences  of  the 
world  have  come  into  Ixiing,  and  of  how  the  different  events  of 
the  world  have  come  to  happen,  in  their  actual  relations  of  se- 
quence and  mutual  dependence.  This  latter  hypothesis,  or  sci- 
ence of  the  world's  development,  aocordin<,dy  ni:ik«*s  use  only  of 
tlie  more  strictly  scientific  forms  of  judgment  and  rojusoning. 
Its  formula  is  :  "  If  ^l  is  //,  then  ^/is  />,"  provided  some  i-elation 
of  dependence  can  be  established  between  the  two  judgments. 


294  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

But  whether  A  really  is  B,  and  C  really  is  D  ;  and  whether 
the  relation  of  dependence  is  one  of  actuality  ; — these  are  not 
matters  for  easy  and  off-hand  settlement,  when  the  object  of 
our  inquiry  is  no  less  than  the  whole  history  of  the  universe 
from  its  conjectural  beginning,  through  its  conjectural  changes, 
down  to  the  present  time.  Our  reserve  of  judgment  is  further 
encouraged,  when  it  is  remembered  that  the  law  and  the  goal 
of  man's  higher  and  more  comprehensive  scientific  endeavors 
are  not  determined  merel}^  by  the  desire  for  a  consistent  logical 
system,  but  for  a  better  understanding  of  actuality, — that  is,  of 
the  world  as  the  race  really  finds  it  given  in  its  experience. 
And  this  real  world  does  not  appear  to  be  much  less  difficult 
comi^letely  to  describe  in  terms  of  modern  evolutionary  science 
than  in  terms  of  religious  mythology  or  theological  specula- 
tion. 

Both  these  classes  of  theories,  and  indeed  all  theories  of 
world-building,  whether  scientific  or  theological,  may  therefore 
well  enough  learn  modesty  and  caution  from  the  vastness  of  the 
problem.  It  is  not  at  all  likely  that  man  will  ever  know,  how- 
ever much  gain  may  be  made  by  the  race  in  scientific  knowl- 
edge or  in  rational  faith,  "  just  how  "  the  world  began  to  be ; 
and  even  less  precisely  what  has  been  the  history  of  its  devel- 
opment in  the  more  distant  times  and  spaces.  Let  us,  then,  be 
more  reasonably  agnostic  about  all  this.  And  let  us  also  re- 
member that  the  cosmic  existences,  cosmic  forces,  and  cosmic 
processes  are  never  to  be  conceived  of  as  antithetic  to,  or  inde- 
pendent of,  the  Being  of  the  World ;  nor  are  the  Supernatural 
One  and  the  natural  many  to  be  considered  as  belonging  to 
mutually  exclusive  spheres. 

The  first  of  the  two  forms  taken  by  the  modern  theory  of 
evolution  is,  of  course,  awfi-theistic  ;  in  its  most  extreme  state- 
ment, it  becomes  a-theistic.  Indeed,  in  this  forjn  the  evolu- 
tionary hypothesis  is  simply  modern  materialism,  dressed  in  the 
only  clothing  in  which  materialism  can  now  hope  to  claim  the 
attention  of  minds  possessed  of  even  a  rudimentary  scientific 


THEISM  AND  EVOLUTION  295 

culture.  That  the  world,  as  known  to  human  experience,  is 
a  development, — this  is  a  conclusion  upon  which  all  our  posi- 
tive sciences  so  converge  their  evidence  as  to  render  it  substan- 
tially unassailable  from  any  point  of  standing.  Wherever  any 
one  of  them  turns  its  search-light,  there  it  reveals  some  portion 
of  Nature — physical  nature,  including  plants  and  animals,  or 
human  nature — placarded,  as  it  were,  with  the  sign  "Evolu- 
tion." No  theory  of  world-building  which  is  not  evolutionary 
can  at  present  hope  to  gain  credence.  Both  Theism  and  ]\Ia- 
terialism,  or  the  denial  of  the  theistic  postulate  and  theistic 
beliefs,  must  be  evolutionary. 

While,  however,  this  is  true,  it  does  not  by  any  means  follow 
that  no  choice  remains  of  a  higher  order  than  that  which  sim- 
ply permits  the  combination,  at  will,  of  any  of  the  elements 
that  may  be  selected  from  the  two-score  biological  theories 
already  proposed,  and  the  other  two-score  or  more  theories  of 
the  psychological  and  historical  sciences,  which  too  often  avail 
themselves  of  biological  terms  to  set  forth  doubtful  conclusions 
in  misleading  figures  of  speech.  Nor  can  reflective  thinking 
over  the  problem  offered  by  the  attempt  to  reconcile  the  scien- 
tific and  the  religious  conceptions  allow  itself  to  be  mystified 
by  such  declarations  as  the  following ' :  "  The  self-generation  of 
natural  law  is  a  necessary  corollary  from  the  persistence  of  mat- 
ter and  force.  .  .  .  For  aught  that  speculative  reason  can  ever 
from  henceforth  show  to  the  contrary,  the  evolution  of  all  the 
divei-se  phenomena  of  inorganic  nature,  of  life,  and  of  mind, 
appears  to  Ik)  a«  necessary  and  as  self-determined  as  is  the  \)e- 
ing  of  that  mysterious  Something  which  is  Everything — the 
Entity  we  must  all  l>elieve  in,  and  which  without  condition  and 
Ixiyond  relation  holds  its  existence  in  itself."  That  all  such 
conc(."pti()ns  as  "  the  self-genenition  of  natural  law,"  '*  a  self- 
determined  (but  non-self-liko)  evolution,"  "a  mysterious  Some- 
thing which  is  Everything,"  and  an  "  unconditioned  and  un- 
related Entity,"  areiilike  untenable  and  worthless  as  explanatory 

'  riiyaicuM— A  Canciid  Kxumiuation  of  TheiAiu  (3d  ed.  1892),  p.  57. 


296  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

principles,  whether  put  forth  in  the  name  of  science  or  in  the 
name  of  religion,  it  is  quite  unnecessary  to  show  again  in  this 
connection.  As  long  as  the  quarrel  is  over  the  relative  values 
of  such  utterly  abstract  and  quite  worthless  conceptions  as  are 
confusedly  gathered  under  tliese  terms,  neither  the  man  who 
takes  his  science  seriously  nor  the  seriously  pious  soul  need 
much  care  as  to  liow  the  quarrel  ends. 

JMaterialistic  evolution  encounters,  in  even  more  effective 
form,  all  the  objections  which  can  be  urged  against  materialism 
in  general.  As  we  have  already  seen,  these  objections  concern 
especially  the  assumptions  with  regard  to  the  material  elements 
out  of  which  the  unity  of  the  world  must  be  built ;  the  gaps 
that  have  to  be  filled  in,  even  after  the  original  endowment  of 
these  elements  has  been  made  as  mysteriously  gifted  as  pos- 
sible ;  the  revolt  of  man's  moral,  sesthetical,  and  religious  be- 
liefs and  sentiments  against  the  picture  of  the  Being  of  the 
World  which  is  constructed  in  this  way  ;  and  the  acknowledged 
increasingly  difficult  nature  of  all  such  crude  attempts  at  the 
metaphysics  of  physics  and  of  chemistry.  "  The  self-genera- 
tion of  natural  law  "  is  not  only  an  inadequate  substitute  for 
personal  Will,  teleologically  immanent  in  the  world  ;  but  it  is 
also,  in  itself  considered,  an  inert  and  self-contradictorj^  con- 
ception. For  natural  law  has  no  generative  power,  even 
within  the  relatively  narrow  domain  to  which  the  idea  of 
biological  generation  properly  applies.  It  is  living  beings  that 
somehow  carry  within  certain  of  their  elements  the  mysterious 
power  to  produce,  by  fission,  proliferation,  and  other  processes, 
other  living  beings  more  or  less  similar  to  themselves.  The 
"  laws  "  of  this  procedure  are  only  the  more  or  less  uniform 
and  consistent  ways  in  which  the  procedure  takes  place.  This 
procedure  is  in  some  sort  a  case  of  self-generation  for  every 
living  cell ;  because  each  such  cell  has  within  itself  the  atomic  or 
molecular  outfit  (or  what  not)  which  makes  the  process  of  gen- 
eration possible.  But  it  has  already  been  said,  that  the  theory 
which  endeavors  to  explain  even  the  single  cell  as  a  mere  col- 


THEISM  AND  EVOLUTION  297 

lection  of  atoms  or  corpuscles,  in  respect  to  its  unitary  and 
purposeful  activities, — of  which  generation  is  only  one, — loads 
down  the  atoms  or  the  corpuscles  with  an  enormous  weight 
of  occult,  original,  and  unchanging,  metaphysical  assumptions. 
Just  here  the  theory  of  evolution  comes  forward  and  increases 
the  necessity  for  further  assumptions  of  the  same  sort,  by 
showing  that  atoms  and  corpuscles  themselves  must  be  sub- 
jects of  development.  The  very  elements  of  things,  organic 
and  inorganic,  must  therefore  be  not  only  self-generating  but 
also  capable  of  generating  other  elements  with  a  different  kind 
of  selves ; — otherwise  the  World  of  things,  as  we  know  it, 
could  not  be  developed.  And  so  sure  of  all  this  is  the  author 
whom  we  have  just  quoted,  that  he  calls  Clerk  Maxwell's 
statement — ''  none  of  the  processes  of  nature,  since  the  time 
ivhen  nature  hegan^  have  produced  the  slightest  difference  in 
the  properties  of  any  molecule  " — "  an  atrocious  piece  of  arro- 
gance." ^ 

However  all  this  may  be,  and  it  is  as  yet  the  very  imper- 
fectly finished  task  of  science  to  tell  how  it  actually  is,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  acceptance  of  the  modern  theory  of 
evolution  enormously  increases  the  tiisk  proposed  to  any  mate- 
realistic  theory  of  the  world's  history.  On  this  point  the  exact 
opposite  of  the  customary  assumption  is  true.  Evolution  does, 
indeed,  succeed  in  biising  itself  upon  facts  of  expenence.  It 
can  at  least  present  to  our  minds  an  attempt  to  unify  those 
facts  in  terms  of  a  general  conception  or  hypothesis.  In  this 
way  it  greatly  extends  man's  knowledge  of,  and  it  deepens  and 
strengthens  his  confidence  in,  the  essential  unity  of  the  world. 
For  it  exhibits  this  world  as  everywhere  moving  forward, 
through  countless  ages  of  time,  in  some  planful  way  toward 
some  distiint  but  i)orhaps  incomprehensible  goal.  Thus  its  en- 
tire history  seems  to  l)o  j)enetrat('d  tlirougliout  and  guiiled  un- 
ceasingly by  one  indwelling  Principle,  one  inini;inent  Life.  liut 
such  a  unitary  Being  of  the  World  is  not "  *SV//-explanatury  *' ; 

>  Physirvis,  Ihid.,  p.  166. 


298  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

nor  can  either  the  scientific  or  the  religious  interest  in  appre- 
ciating more  fully  what  It  really  is,  be  evaded  (much  less  can  it 
be  satisfied)  by  such  vague  conceptions  as  the  "  self-generation 
of  natural  law,"  etc.  This  wonderful  new  world,  with  its 
vastly  greater  subtilty  of  physical  elements  and  mystery  of  new 
and  hitherto  unrecognized  forces,  is  all  the  more  in  need,  so  to 
say,  of  the  help  of  Theism  for  its  explanation.  Only,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  Theism  must  so  modify  and  enlarge  the  conception 
of  the  explanatory  principle  which  it  has  to  offer,  as  will  enable 
this  principle  the  better  to  meet  the  increased  demands  of  the 
hour.  For  the  world,  as  we  now  know  it,  is  much  vaster,  richer, 
and  more  profoundly  mysterious  than  the  world  our  fathers 
knew.  This  fact,  on  the  one  hand,  enormously  increases  the 
objections  to  materialism ;  on  the  other,  it  also  puts  increased 
obligations  upon  the  reflective  thinking  which  takes  the  theistic 
point  of  view.  In  the  days  of  Lucretius,  materialism  was  a 
comparatively  credible  hypothesis.  But  a  world  that  is,  as  it 
were,  all  alive  inward  to  the  minutest  corpuscle,  and  outward 
beyond  the  remotest  visible  star,  would  seem  to  make  a  revival 
of  the  materialistic  hypothesis  in  any  form,  forever  impossible. 
Evolution,  as  a  desciiptive  history  or  strictly  scientific  theory 
of  the  world,  is  not,  however,  incompatible  with  Theism.  On 
the  contrary,  when  rightly  expounded  and  docilely  received,  it 
informs  religious  faith  on  matters  which  lie  quite  beyond  faith's 
province  and  outside  the  limits  of  its  powers  of  insight.  It  is 
not  by  faith  that  knowledge  is  acquired  of  the  modus  operandi 
of  the  Being  of  the  World.  Nowhere,  whether  in  the  form  of 
deductions  from  its  conception  of  the  Divine  Being,  or  of  in- 
spired revelation  in  its  records  of  history  or  of  doctrine,  does 
religion  furnish  any  trustworthy  picture  of  the  order,  or  proc- 
esses in  time,  of  God's  creation  of  the  world.  This  is  as 
true  of  the  early  chapters  of  Genesis  as  it  is  of  the  correspon- 
ding records  of  the  beliefs  and  stories  prevailing  in  early  Baby- 
lonian or  other  religions.  In  all  such  accounts  there  may  be, 
and  there  are,  profound  religious  truths  given  in  the  form  of 


THEISM  AND  EVOLUTION  299 

myth,  or  tradition,  or  shrewd  guesses  which  anticipate  facts 
and  laws  not  yet  established ;  but  of  scientific  and  assured 
knowledge  there  is  none.  It  is  this  conviction  which  has  led 
the  defenders  of  a  theistic  view  of  God's  relations  to  the  world, 
so  largely  to  cease  from  trying  to  reconcile  Genesis  and  ge- 
ology ;  and,  indeed,  to  accept,  if  not  to  welcome,  whatever  the 
positive  sciences  can  show  of  truth  as  to  the  history  of  the 
Divine  creation  of  the  cosmic  system  of  finite  existences,  forces, 
and  laws. 

As  a  descriptive  history  merely.  Evolution  does  not  move 
along  the  same  levels  as  Theism  ;  and  therefore  the  two  cannot 
come  into  deadly  conflict,  or  even  into  hostile  contact.  In  this 
form  the  evolutionary  hypothesis,  whatever  its  subordinate 
and  detailed  opinions  may  be,  claims  tlie  value  only  of  a  nar- 
rative of  how,  in  time,  the  world  became  what  we  now  know  it 
actually  to  be.  Part  of  this  narrative  is  based  upon  verifiable 
facts  of  experience ;  far  the  larger  part,  however,  has  for  its 
basis  the  conjectures  of  gifted  and  brilliant  imaginations  as  to 
what  might  have  been,  in  places  and  times  forever  inaccessible 
to  human  experience.  Further  efforts,  reaching  through  long 
periods  of  future  time,  may  enable  science  greatly  to  enlarge 
the  field  covered  by  fact,  and  better  to  secure  the  basis  of  con- 
jecture. Rut  conjecture  must  always  remain  far  the  larger  por- 
tion of  every  theory  of  evolution  that  ventures  to  include  the 
wh(jle  world  of  things  and  selves  within  the  grasp  of  its  en- 
deavor. For  religion,  no  theory  of  evolution  can  ever  l>e  any 
thing  more  than  a  very  partial  atid  incomplete  descriptive  history 
of  the  way  in  which  God  has  been  creating  the  World.  The  grander 
and  more  inclusive  this  picture  becomes,  the  more  profound 
and  reasonable  are  the  religious  feelings  of  awe  and  mystery 
with  whicli  true  piety  will  hold  it  in  view ;  but  the  more  neces- 
sary and  valuable,  in  tli«.*  interest  of  rational  satisfactions,  will 
be  the  theistic  view  of  (rod's  relations  to  the  World. 

While,  however,  many  authorities  in  modern  science  are  ready 
to  admit  that  no  evolutionary  theory  can  claim  to  be  more  than 


300  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

a  largely  conjectural,  descriptive  history  of  the  world  as  known 
by  man  in  time,  there  are  others  who  are  by  no  means  satisfied 
with  so  limited  a  claim.  The  former  hold  a  conception  of  sci- 
ence which  limits  it  to  description ;  for  them  science  is  the 
discovery  and  statement  under  appropriate  formulas  of  the  uni- 
form sequences  of  phenomena  in  time.  But  the  latter  insist 
on  adding  to  this  conception  a  very  important  clause  which, 
indeed,  largely  transforms  the  very  nature  of  the  evolutionary 
theory.  In  their  view,  scientific  evolution  must  also  explain 
"  the  gradual  passage  of  the  simple  into  the  complex,  the  rise 
of  the  differentiated  out  of  the  undifferentiated,  h^  the  action 
of  purely  natural  causes^  To  this  view  also  the  beliefs,  senti- 
ments, and  practical  life,  of  religion  cannot  reasonably  object, 
if  only  it  be  understood  that  so-called  "  purely  natural  causes  " 
— whatever  may  be  meant  by  this  profoundly  mysterious  term 
— do  not,  anywhere  or  at  any  time  or  under  any  conceivable  cir- 
cumstances, exclude  the  Supernatural  in  the  sense  already  de- 
fined. 

In  the  interest  of  its  completeness  and  efficiency  as  a  scien- 
tific theory,  we  therefore  find  evolution  itself  explained  in 
terms  of  postulated  entities,  forces,  and  invisible  agencies  and 
processes,  of  a  highly  metaphysical  character.  About  the  na- 
ture, number,  and  relative  or  absolute  value,  of  these  ontological 
postulates  there  is  scarcely  any  measure  of  agreement  on  the 
part  of  the  various  authorities  and  schools  at  the  present  time. 
For  this  reason,  and  for  other  reasons  inherent  in  the  very  char- 
acter of  the  experience  to  which  all  evolutionary  theory  must 
appeal,  its  metaphysics  is  a  most  complicated  and  confusing 
affair.  Among  such  postulated  but  sensuously  undiscoverable 
entities  we  have  Darwin's  "primordial  germs,"  or  "gem- 
mules;"  Huxley's  abandoned  Urschlei7n,  and  "bioplasts," 
or  other  form  of  the  as  yet  undifferentiated  "  matter-of-life  "; 
Haeckel's  Monera^  or  "  primeval  parent  of  all  other  organisms," 
which  is  "  nothing  but  a  semifluid  albuminous  lump  ;  "  Weis- 
mann's  "  ontogeny,"  and  especially  that  most  mysterious  part 


THEISM  AND  EVOLUTION  301 

of  it  which  is  "  reserved  unchanged  for  the  formation  of  the 
germ-cells  of  the  following  generation."  In  order  so  to  work 
these  entities  that  they  shall  efficiently  perform  the  processes 
of  development,  a  goodly  number  of  occult  forces,  some  of 
which  are  of  a  decidedly  psycho-physical  character,  need  also 
to  be  assumed.  Such  are  Darwin's  "  innate  tendency  to  new 
variations,''  Huxley's  variability,  "  determined  by  conditions 
inherent  in  that  which  varies  ";  or  "  natural  selection," — a 
term  which,  when  analyzed,  seems  to  cover  a  large  number  of 
forces,  external  and  internal  to  the  organism,  which  somehow 
serve  the  common  psychical  purpose  of  a  preference  for  cer- 
tain forms  over  others.  Tlius  do  metaphysical  entities  and 
occult  forces  somehow  mind-fulhj  co-operate  to  evolve  the  uni- 
tary being  of  the  world,  as  it  reveals  itself  to  the  observer  from 
the  scientific  point  of  view. 

Now  religion  has  no  objection  to  offer  to  any  of  these  meta- 
pliysical  assumptions,  which  the  theory  of  evolution  may  find 
it  necessary  or  desirable  to  make  in  the  interests  of  a  better 
explanation  of  the  facts  of  experience,  so  long  as  the  assumj)- 
tions  are  kept  within  the  limits  of  legitimate  scientific  theory. 
If  tlieir  value  is  only  logical,  they  seem  tlie  better  to  unify  for 
thought  and  imagination  a  pleasing  and  admirable  picture  of 
the  World,  which  must  still,  no  less  than  befoi-e  be  regarded 
as  having  for  religious  faith  the  significance  of  a  dependent 
manifestation  of  God.  If  science  succeeds  in  giving  a  place  of 
undisputed  ontological  value  in  the  real  world  to  these  postu- 
lated entities,  forces,  and  processes ;  even  then,  neither  tlie  Ije- 
liefs  and  feelings  of  piety,  nor  the  views  and  doctrines  of  a 
theistic  i)hih)soi)liy,  need  be  greatly  disturlKHl.  And  snrely 
such  a  "  scientific  view  "  of  the  way  that  the  world  of  things 
and  selves  has  evolved  and  is  still  evolving,  can  scarcely  re- 
ject the  religious  view,  on  the  sole  ground  that  the  latter  is 
only  th(?  result  of  a  deplorable  anthropomorphic,  metapliysical 
tendency ! 

Strictly  speaking,  no   theory  of   evolution   can   bo  made   to 


302  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

serve  as  a  sufficient  explanatory  cause,  or  "  ground,"  of  any 

m 

individual  existence.  Evolution  may  give,  for  every  such 
existence,  a  more  or  less  complete,  but  always  largely  conjec- 
tural, narrative  of  the  order  in  which  its  different  stages  have 
appeared.  In  similar  manner  also,  it  may  connect  the  origin 
and  orderly  evolution  of  this  particular  existence  with  other 
more  or  less  similar  existences  that  are  known,  or  are  conjec- 
tured, to  have  existed  in  past  time.  But  the  causes  of  all  this 
process,  whether  they  lie  in  the  individual  existence  itself,  or 
in  antecedent  existences  of  the  same  or  allied  species,  are  con- 
cealed in  the  theory  under  such  inexplicable  assumptions  as 
"heredity,"  "variability,"  etc.;  or  as  the  chemico-physical 
"  properties "  of  atoms,  corpuscles,  gemmules,  etc.  It  is  to 
these  assumed  beings  and  laws,  or  general  facts,  that  we  must 
look  for  the  proximate,  explanatory  causes.  Yet  after  all, 
every  individual  existence — thing  or  self,  corpuscle  or  star — 
always  has  to  be  taken  in  the  last  analysis  as  a  fact,  a  datum 
of  experience,  which  can  never  be  wholly  resolved  into  grounds, 
or  causes,  that  consist  in  the  mere  order  of  the  occurrences 
connected  with  its  coming  into  existence.  The  history  of  this 
order,  therefore,  never  tells  the  whole  rich  content  of  what 
the  particular  Thing,  or  particular  Self,  really  is ;  much  less 
does  it  afford  a  summary  of  all  the  causes  that  explain  just 
why  that  particular  Thing,  or  that  particular  Self,  came  to  be 
what  indeed  it  really  is. 

The  barriers  which  are  met  by  the  theory  of  evolution  in 
the  attempt  to  explain  any  individual  existence,  are  yet  higher 
and  more  insuperable,  when  the  proposal  is  made  to  explain  in 
terms  of  evolution  the  sum-total  of  the  system  of  all  existen- 
ces, through  infinite  time  and  boundless  space.  It  then  ap- 
pears even  more  evident  that  the  very  factors  which  the  theory 
claims  as  its  own  rightful  and  necessary  postulates,  themselves 
imply,  for  their  real  existence  and  effective  application  to  the 
task  of  world-building,  the  co-ordinating  influence  of  an  intel- 
ligent Will.     Or,  the  rather,  these  factors  are  themselves  only 


THEISM  AND  EVOLUTION  303 

so  many  different  aspects  of  the  manifested  Power,  the  Will 
and  Mind,  which  is  the  Ground  of  the  World  as  it  is  known 
in  human  experience.  Thus  the  same  line  of  scientific  research 
which  leads  to  the  theory  of  evolution,  wlien  reflected  upon 
and  understood  in  its  deeper  significance,  leads  to  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  philosophy  of  religion  :  EvAution  itself  cannot  even 
he  conceived  of^  except  in  connection  with  some  unitary  Being^  im- 
manent in  the  evolutionary  process^  which  reveals  its  own  Nature 
hy  the  nature  of  the  Idea  which^  in  fact^  is  progressively  set  into 
reality  hy  the  process. 

The  whole  problem  now  returns  upon  us  in  a  more  impres- 
sive and  insistent  way.  For  it  is  now  the  problem  of  an  in- 
finitely complex,  and  indefinitely  prolonged,  *' self-evolving" 
World.  This  obliges  the  mind  to  raise  anew  the  question  : 
What  sort  of  a  world — meaning  by  this,  the  sum-total  of 
cosmic  existences,  forces,  and  processes,  as  known,  or  reason- 
ably imagined  or  conjectured,  can  be  capable  of  86'//'-evolution  ? 
It  is  this  very  "  Being  of  the  World  "  which  we  desire  to  ap- 
prehend ;  but  it  must  now  be  apprehended  in  the  completeness 
of  the  outfit  necessary,  not  only  to  continue  its  existence,  but 
also  to  realize  by  a  series  of  intricate  and  inter-related  changes, 
through  millions  and  millions  of  years,  some  all-inclusive  Idea. 
A  self-evolviiig  World  requires  an  immanent  Will  and  Mind; 
— "  Something  far   more    deeply  interfused  "  .  .  .  . 

"  A  motion  and  a  spirit  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought." 

The  philosopliy  of  religion  should,  therefore,  have  little  dif- 
ficulty in  reconciling  permanently  the  conflict  between  Theism 
and  evolutionary  science  over  the  relations  existing  Ixjtween 
God  and  the  Worhl.  On  the  one  liand,  religious  faith  h;is 
only  the  interest  of  preserving  the  r.itional  grounds  for  that 
attitude  toward  iti?  Object  wliich  requires  that  all  the  ex- 
istences, event/s,  and  processes  of  the  things  and  selves 
which  compose  our  toUil  experience,  should  \m.\  regarded  as  de- 
pendent parts  of  the  one  planful  manifestation  of  God.     This 


304  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

faith  is  not  only  favorable  to  the  conception  of  development, 
but  some  of  its  most  essential  beliefs  and  doctrines  require  the 
application  of  this  conception  to  the  experience  of  the  individ- 
ual and  of  the  race.  Without  help  from  the  tenet  of  evolution, 
the  doctrine  of  God  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  cannot  be  vindi- 
cated against  the  charges  offered  by  the  prevalence  of  evil; 
and  the  most  precious  dogmas  of  Christianity  concerning  the 
Divine  work  of  redemption,  the  growth  of  the  Divine  Kingdom 
by  revelation  and  inspiration,  and  the  final  triumph  of  that 
Kingdom  as  the  realized  Ideal  of  an  all-inclusive  good,  cannot 
even  be  stated  in  intelligible  terms.  Thus  the  beliefs,  hopes, 
and  practical  motives  of  a  religion  that  is  compatible  witli  the 
advance  of  race-culture,  require  the  unquestioning  acceptance 
of  tlie  truth,  that  wherever  "  the  earth  bringeth  forth  fruit 
of  herself,"  there  it  is  always,  "  first  the  blade,  then  the  ear, 
after  that  the  full  corn  in  the  ear." 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  only  history  and  science  that  can 
tell  religion  what,  more  precisely,  this  evolutionary  process  has 
been  in  the  past,  is  now,  or  will  probably  continue  to  be.  For  the 
question  of  the  precise  order,  and  the  exact  how,  of  the  world's 
development  is  not  a  problem  to  be  solved  by  faith.  The  un- 
folding of  the  life  of  religion  itself,  whether  in  tlie  individual 
or  in  the  race,  demands  an  investigation,  conducted  after  his- 
torical methods,  into  scientifically  established  facts.  And, 
finally,  the  picture  which  studies  in  evolution  enable  the  pres- 
ent age  to  draw  of  the  way  in  which  the  world  has  been  made 
in  the  past,  and  is  still  in  process  of  making,  stirs  to  their  pro- 
foundest  depths  the  religious  feeUngs  of  awe,  mystery,  de- 
pendence, and  worshipfulness.  Evolution  makes  more  reason- 
able those  beliefs  which  attribute  to  the  Being  of  the  World 
such  majesty  and  sublimity  of  Will,  and  such  rationality  and 
benevolence  of  purpose  as  are  satisfied  only  b}^  the  conception 
of  this  Being  as  Absolute  Personality,  and  perfect  Ethical 
Spirit.  It  is,  however,  when  the  history  of  humanity  is  re- 
garded as  manifesting  the  Divine  holiness,  and  the  redemp- 


THEISM  AND  EVOLUTION  305 

tive  processes  which  derive  from  it  their  potency,  that  religious 
experience  finds  its  demands  for  satisfaction  most  fully  met  by 
the  doctrine  of  development. 

Let  us,  then,  for  a  brief  moment  indulge  the  imagination  in 
prophetic  insight  and  foresight,  with  a  spirit  that  is  at  the  same 
time  docile  toward  the  conclusions  of  evolutionary  science  and 
genial  toward  the  ideas  of  value,  and  the  valuable  faiths,  of 
man's  religious  experience.  According  to  science,  countless 
decades  of  centuries  lie  behind  us  in  the  past,  during  which  the 
life  that  is,  so  to  say,  latent  in  the  Being  of  the  World,  has  been 
coming  to  a  higher  and  more  complete  manifestation  in  the 
history  of  human  selves.  All  the  lower  forms  of  this  manifes- 
tation, both  inorganic  and  organic,  have  their  value  and  signifi- 
cance in  the  process  of  evolution.  They  stand,  each  species, 
and  even  every  individual  in  each  species,  not  only  for  some 
good-in-itself,  but  also  for  some  higher  good  in  respect  of  the 
contri])ution  which  they  have  made  toward  the  onward  move- 
ment of  this  process.  The  evolution  is,  indeed,  necessarily  ac- 
companied by,  and  dependent  upon,  a  vast,  an  incalculable 
amount  of  struggle,  suffering,  and  death.  But,  from  a  reli- 
gious point  of  view,  this  "  necessity  "  is  not  that  which  compels 
a  mechanical  system,  like  a  mill  to  grind  on,  regardless  of  the 
results  produced  in  the  condition  of  the  material  that  is  being 
fed  into  it.  Neither  is  it  fitly  described  as  a  "Will-to-live," 
that  cannot,  however,  justify  itself  by  an  appeal  to  those  highest 
products  of  its  own  volition,  which  it  has  mysteriously  made 
capable  of  passing  judgment  upon  its  moral  character,  and  of 
consenting  or  refusing  to  conform  themselves  to  its  Will.  This 
necessity  is,  the  rather,  somehow — altliough  man  can  only 
dimly  appreliend,  and  never  fully  comprehend,  this  "  how  " — 
inherent  in  the  Good-Will  of  the  Being  of  the  World  itself. 
For  faith,  now  not  blind  and  credulous,  but  made  more  hopeful 
and  reasonable  by  evolutitJiiary  science  itself,  holds  that  all  this 
necessary  stnig<(le,  suffering,  and  death,  is  the  expression  of  an 
abtiolute  and  perfect   Ethical   Spirit,  whose  absoluteness  guar- 

20 


306  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

antees  the  certainty  of  the  end,  and  whose  ethical  perfection 
will  secure  the  realization,  by  the  totality  of  the  process,  of 
what  is  supremely  worthy  of  the  cost,  because  it  is  the  supreme 
and  all-inclusive  good. 

From  this  height  of  religious  faith  the  beholder  may  look 
upon  all  of  the  process  of  evolution,  so  far  as  observation  or 
imagination  can  bring  it  under  review,  with  feelings  of  pity 
and  sympathy,  for  the  cost,  but  with  feelings  of  trust,  calmness, 
and  resignation,  as  respects  the  justness  of  the  process  and  the 
value  of  the  end.  And  inasmuch  as  religious  experience  leads 
to  the  belief  that, — 

"  The  loving  worm  within  its  clod, 
Were  diviner  than  a  loveless  God 
Amid  his  worlds," — 

it  also  induces  the  participation,  in  thought  and  in  action, 
in  that  work  of  Divine  redemptive  struggle,  suffering,  and 
death,  which  the  very  perfection  of  God  makes  ethically  nec- 
essary for  Him. 

From  the  same  height  of  faith,  too,  the  theory  of  evolution 
is  seen  to  afford  a  new  significance  to  all  the  upward  striving 
of  the  Life  that  is  immanent  in  the  history  of  the  biological 
series,  as  modern  science  so  forcefully  describes  this  history. 
*'  Death  and  birth,"  said  Fichte,  "  is  simply  the  struggle  of  life 
with  itself,  in  order  to  display  itself  more  clearly  and  more  like 
itself."  All  the  lower  forms  of  life,  as  regarded  from  this  point 
of  view,  have  a  specific  reality  and  value  of  their  own ;  but  they 
are  the  more  real  and  the  more  valuable,  because  they  are  the 
necessary  pioneers,  and  forerunners,  of  the  life  of  man's  moral 
and  spiritual  Self.  But  man,  too — not  only  as  an  individual 
Self,  but  also  as  that  member  of  the  biological  series  who  has 
the  superlatively  great  share  in  the  benefits  to  procure  which 
all  the  members  of  this  series  have  struggled,  suffered,  and 
died — must  purchase  for  himself,  under  the  plan  still  necessi- 
tated by  God's  Good-Will,  the  higher  and  yet  higher  develop- 
ment of  self-hood  in  the  society  of  redeemed  selves.     This 


THEISM  AND  EVOLUTION  307 

personal  and  social  redemption,  too,  must  pay  the  price.  The 
higher  life  costs  heavily ;  but  faith  credits  it  with  a  value  that 
is  greater  than  its  cost.  And  thus,  from  the  religious  point  of 
view,  the  entire  process  of  biological  evolution  may  be  regarded 
as  a  demonstration  of  how  the  lower  soul — 

"Grows  into,  and  again  is  grown  into 
By  the  last  soul,  that  uses  both  the  first, 
Subsisting,  whether  they  assist  or  no. 
And,  constituting  man's  self,  is  what  Is 

•  •  •  •  •  • 

and,  tending  up, 
Holds,  is  upheld  by  God,  and  ends  the  man 
Upward  in  that  dread  point  of  intercourse, 
Nor  needs  a  place,  for  it  returns  to  Hira/' 

For  God,  in  his  relation  to  the  evolutionary  process,  cannot 
be  conceived  of,  with  any  approach  to  satisfaction  of  either  in- 
tellect, heart,  or  will,  unless  the  enormous  amount  of  loss  and 
death  with  which  this  process  seems,  of  necessity,  to  be  accom- 
panied, may  be  regarded  as  only  preparatory  to  a  higher,  and, 
finally,  to  the  highest  and  most  permanently  valuable,  form  of 
life.  Such  a  life  is  the  spiritual  life  ;  the  sharing  by  the  human 
race  in  the  fullness  of  the  life  of  God.  Thus  all  the  *'  travail " 
of  creation,  to  which  the  Apostle  Paul  refere,  is  introduction, 
as  it  were,  to  the  work  of  religion  regarded  as  the  spiritual  up- 
lift of  humanity.  Tlie  preface  is  tragic.  The  scene  of  the 
great  drama  is  itself  full  of  tragedy  ;  but  the  conclusion  of  it 
all  is  the  triumph  of  that  social  Ideal  which  biblical  religion 
denominates  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

Against  this  faith  evolutionary  science  can  have  no  reason 
for  complaint;  since  every  barrier  is  removed  to  its  freest 
ranging  in  the  fiekls  where  either  logical  consistency,  or  ont(v 
logical  values,  give  the  law  to  the  hunter  ami  the  reward  of 
his  success.  The  World  is  no  less  God's  World  because 
evolved  by  God,  wlioso  immanent  Will  and  Reason  arc  the 
fundamental  and  the  final  principle  of  the  evolutionary  process. 


308  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

He  who  is  the  Ground  of  its  being  at  all,  is  no  less  the  Ground 
of  its  ceaseless  becoming.  For  it  is  not  with  an  alpha  and 
an  omega  alone, — and  leaving  out  all  letters  between  the  two, — 
that  we  should  spell  the  title  which  God  possesses  to  be  recog- 
nized by  any  theory  of  the  evolution  of  the  world.  From  re- 
ligion's point  of  view  evolution  itself  is  just  this, — the  way  of 
the  World  hi  becoming,  in  time,  a  more  and  more  full,  hut  always 
dependent  manifestation  of  God. 

The  problem  which  is  offered  by  the  conflict  between  The- 
ism and  Evolution,  and  which  is  answered  by  the  theistic  po- 
sition so  as  to  include  in  harmony  the  claims  of  both,  is  not 
infrequently  proposed  in  a  yet  more  difficult  form  by  the  phi- 
losophy of  religion  itself.  In  its  desire  to  do  full  credit  to  the 
important  conception  of  development,  especially  when  this 
conception  is  made  to  cover  the  whole  world  as  known  in  the 
totality  of  human  experience,  an  attempt  is  made  to  apply  it 
to  God  Himself.  The  world  is  known  in  its  essential  nature 
only  as  it  is  known  to  be  in  a  process  of  evolution.  The 
essential  Being  of  God  is  known  only  as  manifested  in  and 
through  the  world.  What,  then,  should  prevent  us  from 
holding  that  this  essential  Being  is  itself,  in  its  real  essence, 
evolutionary  ? 

The  attempt  to  conceive  of  God,  or  the  Divine  Being,  as 
undergoing  a  process  of  development,  profoundly  changes  the 
whole  philosophy  of  religion.  This  change  appears  in  its  con- 
ception of  the  predicates  and  attributes  appropriate  to  this  Be- 
ing, and  in  its  theory  of  Nature  and  the  Supernatural.  God,  if 
we  continue  to  apply  this  term  to  the  World-Ground,  is  no 
longer,  as  it  were,  inherently  possessed  of  infinite  and  absolute 
power  and  knowledge  ;  He  is,  the  rather,  coming  unceasingly  to 
the  more  perfect  possession  of  these  predicates.  He  is  not  es- 
sentially and  eternally  wise,  holy,  and  good, — a  perfect  Ethical 
Spirit ;  He  is  Himself  constantly  becoming  more  and  more 
conscious,  as  it  were,  and  observant  of  the  moral  principles, 
which  have  from  the  beginning  somehow  lain  dormant  in  his 


THEISM  AND  EVOLUTION  309 

nature.  A  Deity  that  develops,  may  be,  indeed,  essentially 
Spirit ;  but  the  completeness  of  this  spiritual  essence  must  be 
discovered,  not  in  what  He  has  eternally  been,  but  the  rather 
in  what  He  will  in  the  future  become.  And  if  the  inquiry  be 
pressed  as  to  the  particular  form,  under  cover  of  which  this 
evolution  of  the  Divine  Being  is  going  on,  the  answer  must  of 
course  point  to  the  development  of  the  human  race.  As  the 
race  becomes,  in  the  person  of  its  highest  representatives,  or 
as  represented  by  the  general  average  of  humanity,  more  truly 
cultured,  and  especially  more  spiritual  ethically ;  this  hitherto 
hidden  and  unconscious  spirituality  of  God  the  more  fully 
realizes  itself.  For  it  is  preeminently  in  man,  and  in  man's 
historical  development  that  God  is  always  immanent.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  character  of  this  immanence  being  judged  by 
its  highest  manifestation,  we  are  compelled  to  say  that  it  con- 
sists in  the  way  it  perfects  itself  by  a  process  of  becoming.  In 
a  word,  the  Divine  omniscience  must  be  conceived  of  as  the 
sum-total  of  the  evolution  of  more  and  higher  knowledge  in 
the  science  of  the  race.  The  Divine  spirituality  must  l)e 
thought  of  as  the  increasing,  collective  growth  of  human 
society,  organized  and  guided  in  accordance  with  ethical  prin- 
ciples, in  the  realization  of  spiritual  ideals.  Indeed,  God's  so- 
called  Absolute  Personality  merits  tliis  title,  only  because  it  is 
not  conceived  of  after  the  analogy  of  the  individual  man, 
whose  personality  is  always  relative  to,  and  dependent  upon, 
that  of  others  in  the  race.  The  Divine  Self  is  the  sum-totil  of 
the  finite  selves  which  compose  the  race,  and  whieli  are  ever 
on  the  way  to  Ixjcoming  more  and  more  truly  pei'sonal. 

Such  a  view  as  tlie  foregoing  of  the  rehitions  which  maintain 
themselves  between  the  Divine  Being  and  a  world  which  is 
known  to  Ix^  in  a  process  of  evohition,  has  a  fascination  for 
minds  enamonnl  of  logical  consistcncv.  Besides  this,  it  un- 
doubtedly presents  certain  features  that  appear  favorable  to 
Bome  of  tlie  more  important  iM'liefs  and  feelings  of  religion. 
The  latter  excellence  is  due  chiefly,  if  not  wholly,  to  the  graphic 


310  PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION 

and  seemingly  intimate  way  in  which  it  presents  the  doctrine 
of  the  immanence  of  God  in  all  human  experience.  That  the 
power,  cunning,  and  purpose  toward  men,  of  the  divine  invisible 
beings,  are  present  in  all  the  life  and  growth  of  other  concrete 
beings,  is  a  tenet  essential  and  dear  to  all  the  lower  forms  of 
religious  belief.  That  God's  Infinite  Spirit  is  sympathetically 
and  helpfully  present  in  all  the  struggles,  sufferings,  and  even 
failures,  of  human  finite  spirits,  is  a  conviction  with  the  truth 
of  which  no  religion  that  offers  to  man  "  a  way  of  salvation  " 
can  possibly  dispense.  "  He  knoweth  our  frame ;  he  remem- 
bereth  that  we  are  dust."  And  of  him  whom  Christianity  re- 
gards as  manifesting  more  than  any  other  the  real  nature  of  the 
Divine  Spirit,  it  is  said :  "  Though  he  were  a  Son,  yet  learned 
he  obedience  by  the  things  which  he  suffered  ;  and  being  made 
perfect,  he  became  the  author  of  eternal  salvation  unto  all  them 
that  obey  him."  Moreover,  in  attempting  to  elaborate  the 
theistic  theory  of  the  Divine  relations  to  the  World,  it  was 
found  necessary  to  regard  God  as  "  co-conscious,"  and  thus 
consciously  immanent,  in  every  act,  and  phase  of  the  unfold- 
ing spiritual  life  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race.  And,  finally, 
any  even  tentative  and  partial  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil 
seemed  to  require  that  God,  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  should 
be  conceived  of,  not  as  abiding  in  a  blessed  aloofness  from  the 
sufferings  and  sins  of  humanity,  but  as  the  Suffering  though 
Blessed  One,  and  as  the  immanent  Redeemer  of  man,  by 
an  historical  process,  from  his  condition  of  suffering  and  of 
sin. 

All  attempt  to  apply  the  conception  of  evolution  to  the  Di- 
vine Being,  however,  when  more  closely  examined  and  thor- 
oughly thought  out,  is  seen  to  defeat  itself.  It  represents  the 
immanency  of  God  in  a  way  largely  to  render  it  ineffective ; 
and  the  doctrine  of  the  Divine  transcendency  is  quite  over- 
looked or  made  impossible  from  its  point  of  view.  Collective 
humanity  is  not  a  satisfactory  substitute  for  the  Absolute  Per- 
sonality, the  Unitary  Being  of  an  omnipotent  will  and  an  om- 


THEISM  AND  EVOLUTION  311 

niscient  mind ;  much  less  is  it  an  adequate  representative  of 
man's  Ideal  of  ethical  perfection.  If  the  conception  of  God 
is  to  serve  human  reason  as  an  explanatory  principle,  as  a  real 
"  World-Ground,"  God  must  he  conceived  of  as  the  adequate 
Ground  of  this  world  as  we  actually  find  it.  But  the  world, 
as  we  actually  find  it,  is  in  a  process  of  evolution.  God  as  the 
Ground  of  the  World  must,  therefore,  be  so  conceived  of  as  to 
account,  not  only  for  what,  according  to  the  evolutionary  hy- 
pothesis, the  world  has  been  and  is  now,  but  also  for  all  that 
which,  according  to  the  expectations  and  predictions  based 
upon  this  hypothesis,  the  world  is  destined  in  the  future  to 
become.  And  in  this  connection,  the  development  of  human 
society  toward  the  better  realization  of  its  cherished  ideals 
must,  in  a  very  special  way,  be  taken  into  the  account. 

The  conception  of  a  self-evolution  of  God,  therefore,  turns 
out  to  be  a  resort  to  the  lower  form  of  an  unconscious  and  im- 
pereonal  Mechanism,  or  a  semi-personal  and  undeveloped  World- 
Soul,  as  a  substitute  for  the  theistic  conception  of  God  as  Ab- 
solute Person  and  perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  It  has  some  of  the 
excellences,  and  also  most  of  the  defects,  which  always  accom- 
pany the  views  entertained  by  the  different  forms  of  pantheism. 
It  is,  however,  in  its  application  to  the  various  religious  doc- 
trines which  symbolize  those  relations  of  God  to  the  world 
tliat  are  most  vital  and  valuable  in  the  reUgious  experience  of 
the  race,  tliat  tliis  conception  fails  most  conspicuously  of  af- 
fording satisfaction  either  to  philosophy  or  to  faith.  Only  if 
the  evolution  of  things  and  selves,  as  it  appeal's  in  history  and 
to  modern  science,  may  Ixj  regarded  as  a  process  of  Divine  self- 
revelation,  can  philosophy  and  religious  faith  be  harmonized 
upon  a  biusis  of  liistorical  and  scientific  facts.  Evolution  is 
manifestation  of  the  Absolute  ;  evolution  can  never  bo  xXa 
producing  cause. 

In  conceiving  of  the  relations  between  God  lus  l*ersonal  Ab- 
solute and  the  process  of  tlic  world's  evolution,  tht*  inescapable 
limitations   which  lx.'long    to   all   human   knowledge — whether 


312  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

scientific,  philosophical,  or  implicate  in  the  content  of  religious 
faith — must  constantly  be  kept  in  mind.  In  its  doctrine  of 
God  as  Creator,  Preserver,  and  Moral  Ruler  and  Redeemer, 
theology  has  too  often  striven  for  conceptions  that  should  be 
spaceless,  timeless,  unconditional ;  and  so  should  represent 
these  relations  between  the  World  and  its  Ground,  suh  specie 
ceternitatis,  as  it  were.  On  the  otlier  hand,  in  order  to  escape 
the  necessity  of  introducing  Deity  as  an  explanatory  principle, 
even  at  the  beginning  of  the  world,  evolutionary  science  has 
tried  to  help  itself  out  by  postulating  an  infinite  amount  of 
undifferentiated  material ;  and  this  material  is  thought  of  as 
self-existent,  or  as  "  left  over  "  from  the  wreck  to  which  some 
preexistent  world  had  already  been  brought  by  an  evolu- 
tionary process.  If  we  inquire  after  the  ground  of  this  pre- 
existent world,  with  its  "  self-generating  natural  law,"  we  are 
referred  to  another  still  preexistent  world  ;  and  so  on,  ad  in- 
jiriitum.  Now  this  abstract  conception  of  a  Divine  Being,  that 
may  be  conceived  of  in  terms  not  drawn  from  experience,  but 
as  existing  suh  specie  ceternitatis,  and  the  equally  abstract  con- 
ception of  an  eternally  self-existent  and  self-generating  World, 
are  alike  useless  both  to  religion  and  to  philosophy.  The  only 
Divine  Being  man  knows,  or  can  know,  is  God  as  manifested  in 
the  totality  of  an  experienced  world, — a  world  that  is  essentially 
conditioned  upon  relations  which  are  realized  in  space  and  time, 
and  as  an  historical  development.^  The  only  world  that  science 
can  know  is  just  this  same  experienced  world.  To  experience 
God  by  faith,  as  manifested  in  this  world,  is  the  essence  of 
religion.  To  know  God  as  revealed  in  this  religious  experience 
is  the  aim  of  the  philosophy  of  religion.  Both  religious  expe- 
rience and  philosophical  knowledge  are  subject  to  development. 
But  so  is  evolutionary  science  itself.  Religion,  science,  and 
philosophy,  all  have  their  roots  in  the  unitary  being  of  man  ; 

1  For  a  discussion  of  the  way  in  which  the  categories  of  Time  and  Space 
are  related  to  the  conception  of  an  Absolute  Self,  see  the  author's  A  Theory 
of  Reality,  chapters  VIII  and  IX. 


THEISM  AND  EVOLUTION  313 

and  by  his  progress  toward  the  realization  of  his  ideals,  all 
these  aspects  and  experiences  of  his  own  nature  are  more 
and  more  to  be  harmonized  and  united  as  permanent  and 
fundamentally  important  factors  in  the  total  evolution  of  the 
race. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 

GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERTEB 

That  the  invisible  divine  beings,  or  gods,  have  much  to  do 
with  the  shaping  and  even  with  the  production  of  things,  has 
been  the  conviction  of  the  religious  consciousness  from  the  be- 
ginning until  now.  Indeed,  it  is  this  conviction  that  gives  to 
the  popular  divinities  much  of  the  influence  which  they  pos- 
sess, to  excite  the  fears,  hopes,  and  other  affections,  of  their 
worshippers.  Yet  the  impulse,  or  motifs  which  leads  the  mind 
to  believe  in  creator  gods,  or  in  the  one  God  as  the  Creator,  is 
not  precisely  the  same  as  that  which  leads  to  the  belief  in  the 
popular  divinities.  Neither  is  the  development  of  religious 
cosmogonies  by  any  means  wholly  parallel  to  the  development 
of  the  doctrine  of  God  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  and  Moral 
Ruler  of  the  world.  The  more  primary  and  practically  oper- 
ative impulses  to  religion  have  been  seen  to  be  the  fears  of  evil, 
and  the  desires  for  good,  which  lead  the  sensitive  spirit  of 
man  toward  the  invisible  and  o^^^r-spiritual  Being  which  en- 
virons him.  But  the  belief  in  divine  creation  is  a  matter 
chiefly  of  theoretical  and  speculative  interest. 

In  the  very  beginning,  however,  so  far  as  definite  informa- 
tion enables  us  to  describe  this  beginning,  man  employs  his  re- 
ligious belief  in  the  construction  of  a  theory  of  reality.  He 
asks  most  imperatively,  it  is  true,  the  pressing  practical  ques- 
tions :  How  may  I  so  "  square  myself "  with  the  gods  as  to 
save  my  crops,  my  cattle,  my  wife  and  my  children ;  But  he 
also  asks :  How  did  tilings  come  to  be  as  they  are  ?  Who 
made  the  world  ?  and   How  shall  I  account  for  the  ceaseless 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER      315 

process  of  the  coming  and  going  of  individual  existences  ?  It 
is,  then,  a  most  natural  phenomenon  to  find  the  races  which, 
from  certain  points  of  view,  are  rated  lowest,  believing  in 
creator  gods ;  and  in  the  generation  of  men,  animals,  and 
things,  by  the  divine  beings. 

As  to  tlie  manner  of  the  divine  making  of  the  world,  a  num- 
ber of  views  prevail  among  savage  or  primitive  peoples.  Of 
these  the  most  naively  anthropomorphic  may  be  called  the 
Potters'  or  Moulders'  view.  Thus  Tzacol,  or  the  "builder," 
and  Patol,  tlie  "  moulder,"  are  terms  used  for  some  of  their 
gods  by  the  Mayan  tribe  of  Indians.^  Certain  Australians  call 
a  similar  divinity  by  the  name  Baiame,  or  the  "cutter-out  " — 
as  of  a  sandal  from  a  skin.  Physical  generation,  the  primitive 
form  of  the  belief  in  the  divine  fatherhood,  by  associating  the 
creator  with  a  wife  who  is  the  genatrix  of  all  things,  or  a  uni- 
versal mother,  furnishes  another  analogy  under  which  to  con- 
ceive of  the  divine  act  of  creation.  Under  this  form  appear 
most  of  the  East  Indian  myths.  But  the  Bushmen,  too,  whose 
material  poverty  and  physical  degradation  are  undoubted,  be- 
lieve in  a  male  and  a  female  divinity,  who  are,  themselves,  the 
invisible  parents  of  visible  objects.  Tlie  Hottentots,  whom 
certiiin  of  the  earlier  anthropologists  rated  as  only  slightly 
above  the  Orang-Utang,  boast,  as  did  the  early  Greeks,  that 
their  ancestors  are  descended  from  a  god,  called  Jouma  (the 
"  Great  Captain  "),  to  whom  they  iiscrilje  the  work  of  creation, 
and  whom  they  regard  ixs  the  giver  of  all  life. 

I'lie  Iltibrews,  however,  were  by  no  means  the  only  people 
who  early  arrived  in  a  largely  independent  way  at  some  more 
spiritual  conception  of  the  divine  motliod  in  creation.  Among 
the  Zuflis  of  N(!W  Mexico  the  god  Awonawilona  was  said  to 
hiivu  conceived  the  world  "  within  himself  and  thought  it  out- 
ward in  space."  C)r,  since  the  word  expresses  the  wish  of  the 
mind,  he  speaks  in  kinglike  fiishion  and  it  is  done ;  he  com- 
mands and  it  stands  fast.     But  the  following  view  of  the  same 

»  Sec  Hrinton,  Religions  of  Primitive  Peoples,  p.   179  ami  chap.  VII. 


316  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

people  would  seem  to  require  that  it  should  be  placed  some- 
where between  the  second  and  the  third  of  those  views  de- 
scribed above :  "  With  the  substance  of  himself  did  the  all- 
father  impregnate  the  great  waters,  the  world-holding  sea."  In 
like  fashion  the  Mixtecs  asserted  that  before  there  ever  were 
years  or  days,  the  world  lay  in  darkness ;  all  things  were  or- 
derless,  and  "  a  water  covered  the  slime  and  ooze  that  the 
earth  then  was."  But  by  the  efforts  of  the  two  winds,  one 
personified  as  a  bird  and  the  other  as  a  winged  serpent,  the 
waters  subsided  and  the  dry  land  appeared.^ 

In  similar  lofty  manner,  certain  of  the  native  Australians  be- 
lieve that,  besides  the  demons  and  bad  spirits,  there  is  a  good  god 
"  Tian  "  who  dwells  in  heaven  and  made  all  things,  even  includ- 
ing the  heavens  themselves.  All  another  creator  god  needed 
to  do  was  to  say :  "  Let  earth  appear  ;  let  water  appear  ;  "  and 
it  was  so.^  Like  beliefs  are  held  by  those  natives  of  Queens- 
land whom  Sir  John  Lubbock  classified,  on  the  authority  of 
Dr.  Lang,  as  without  any  religion.  And  a  strange  old  chant 
of  the  Dinkas  runs  ; 

"  At  the  beginning,  when  Dendid  made  all  things, 

He  created  the  Sun. 
And  the  Sun  is  born,  and  dies,  and  comes  again  ! 

He  created  the  Stars, 
And  the  Stars  are  born,  and  die,  and  come  again! 

He  created  Man, 
And  Man  is  born,  and  dies,  and  returns  no  more!  " 

Similar  views  are  held  by  the  Polynesians  regarding  the  so- 
called  ''high  gods,"  and  are  expressed  in  their  creation  my ths.^ 
Tangaloa  is  worshipped  by  them,  under  different  names,  as  the 
special  "head-god"  of  them  all,  by  whom  all  the  other  gods, 
and  men,  and  all  things,  were  made ;  though  some  of  the 
myths  attribute  the  creation  of  the  heavens,  clouds,  stars,  wind, 

1  So  Garcia,  as  quoted  by  Brinton,  The  Myths  of  the  New  World,  p.  230/. 

2  See  Roskoff,  Das  Religionswesen  der  rohesten  Naturvolker,  pp.  36^. 

3  See  Waitz  and  Gerland,  Anthropologic  der  Naturvolke*  "^I,  pp.  231/., 
336/. 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER  317 

plants,  and  animals  to  his  son  Raitubu.  In  the  Samoan  crea- 
tion-myths Tangaloa  is  spoken  of  as  dwelling  "  in  the  pure 
air,"  where  he  *' hovered  as  a  bird"  and  had  power  over  tlie 
rest  of  the  gods,  who  were  for  the  most  part  his  children. 
Among  the  Polynesians,  as  elsewhere,  the  "  high  gods,"  or 
"  creator  gods,"  are  not  wont  to  concern  themselves  particu- 
larly about  the  details  of  present  affairs  going  on  among  men. 
They  do  not  need,  therefore,  to  be  propitiated ;  and  there  is 
little  occasion  for  offering  sacrifices  or  prayers  to  them.  It  is 
this  relation  of  the  god  and  man  which  leads  Waitz  ^  to  say  of 
the  Redskins  that  the  "  Great  Spirit  "  "  stands  at  the  head  of 
their  religion,"  but  ''not  at  its  center."  Of  the  fetish-wor- 
shippei*s  on  the  West  Coast  of  Africa,  Nassau  declares  "  I  have 
yet  to  be  asked,  '  Who  is  God  ?  '  "  Njambi,  or  the  '  One-who- 
made-ns,'  is  "  the  name  of  that  Great  Being  which  was  every- 
where and  in  every  tribe,  before  any  of  them  had  become  en- 
lightened ;  varied  in  form  in  each  tribe  by  the  dialectic  differ- 
ence belonging  to  their  own,  and  not  imported  from  others."  ^ 

While,  then,  we  are  not  able  to  affirm  that  all  tribes,  even 
the  lowest  in  race-culture,  have  always  believed  in  creator 
gods,  we  are  able  to  point  to  this  attempt  to  account  for  the 
coming  and  going  of  the  world's  visible  existences  by  reference 
to  the  creative  agency  of  the  divine  invisible  powers,  as  a  nat- 
ural and  inevitable  factor  in  the  origin  and  development  of 
religion. 

Tins  view  is  further  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  all  the  most 
ancient  cosmogonies  are  religious  in  their  character  and  their 
origin.  Tliey  ascrilxj  the  beginnings  of  things  to  the  g(Kls  ; 
altjjough  they  nowhere  rise  to  the  speculative  conception  of 
creation  in  the  stricter  significance  of  that  word  (a  ereafio  ex 
niJiil'i^.  In  this  respect,  however,  the  more  ancient  religious 
cosmogonies — with  the  possible  exception  of  the  Ilebivw  cos- 
mogony as  detiiiled  in  (ienesis  i,  1-ii,  3 — do  not  differ  from 

»  Ihid.,  Ill,  p.  178. 

2  Fetichism  in  West  Africa,  p.  37. 


318  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  philosophical  theories  of  world-building  which  began  among 
the  Greeks.  Both  assume  certain  preexistent  and  unexplained 
material, — a  kind  of  "  stuff "  "  found  on  hand,"  as  it  were ; 
they  then  undertake  to  tell  how  the  successive  differentiations 
and  elaborations  of  this  material  took  place.  In  the  one  case, 
however,  the  world  proceeds  to  make  itself ;  in  the  other  case, 
a  divine  invisible  spirit  shapes  this  material  into  a  more  or  less 
orderly  system  of  things.  This  same  difference  in  point  of 
view,  and  in  the  character  of  the  principles  postulated  in  the 
interests  of  explanation,  forms  the  principal  distinction  between 
the  doctrine  of  theism  and  the  theory  of  scientific  materialism 
at  the  present  time. 

The  cosmogonic  ideas  of  the  Semitic,  the  Indo-Aryan,  and 
the  other  ancient  religions,  although  they  differ  in  details,  and 
although  certain  characteristics  of  superiority  must  be  conceded 
to  the  Hebrew  cosmogony,  are  in  most  important  points  essen- 
tially alike.  There  are  two  versions  of  the  Babylonian,  as  there 
are  of  the  Hebrew  cosmogony.  In  the  Creation  Epic  or  "  Epic 
of  Marduk  "  we  are  informed  : — 

"  There  was  a  time  when  above  the  heaven  was  not  named; 
Below,  the  earth  bore  no  name. 

Apsu  (or  Ocean)  was  there  from  the  first,  the  source  of  both, 
And  raging  Tiamat  (T'hom),  the  mother  of  both." 

Then  follows  a  conception  of  the  making  of  the  world  which 
is  foreign  to  the  Hebrew  thought.  For,  according  to  Professor 
Jastrow,^  "  Apsu  represents  the  male,  and  Tiamat  the  female 
principle  of  the  primaeval  universe."  Out  of  the  chaotic  mix- 
ture, where  all  was  darkness  and  water,  strange  monsters  arose. 
"  Then  were  the  gods  created  in  their  totality."  It  was  the  god 
Marduk  who  subdued  the  *'  raging  Tiamat "  and  reduced  the 
seething  and  ungovernable  chaos  to  order  and  to  cosmic  form. 

"  He  established  the  stations  for  the  great  gods. 
The  stars,  their  likeness  he  set  up  as  constellations. 
He  fixed  the  year  and  marked  the  divisions." 

1  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  411. 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER  319 

For  all  this  he  is  called  the  "  creator  of  abundance  and  full- 
ness "  and  ^*  the  lord  of  lands  ;  "  for  *'  he  created  the  heavens 
and  formed  the  earth." 

In  the  earlier  Vedic  religion  *'  there  is  also  a  vague  nascent 
belief  in  a  creator  apart  from  any  natural  phenomenon,  but 
the  creed  for  the  most  part  is  poetically,  indefinitely  stated."^ 
Dhatar  ("  maker  ")  is,  however,  called  "  most  wonder-working 
of  the  wonder-working  gods,  who  made  heaven  and  earth."  In 
the  Rig-Veda  (vi,  48,  22)  it  is  expressly  said :  "  Only  once 
was  heaven  created,  only  once  was  earth  created ";  but  this 
creation  is  attributed  to  different  gods.  The  speculative  mind 
of  the  Hindus,  however,  could  not  rest  satisfied  with  so  naively 
anthropomorphic  a  conception  of  the  way  in  which  the  present 
system  of  things  and  souls  came  into  being ;  and  therefore 
at  the  end  of  the  Vedic  period  theosophy  invented  tlie  "  god 
of  the  golden  germ" — a  pantheistic  conception.  This  panthe- 
istic and  evolutionary  view  expressed  itself  in  such  myth- 
making  as  follows:  "The  world  was  at  first  water;  thereon 
floated  a  cosmic  golden  egg  (the  principle  of  fire).  Out  of 
this  came  Spirit  that  desired ;  and  by  desire  he  l)egat  the 
world  and  all  things."  But  all  through  its  history  the  religion 
of  Hinduism,  in  spite  of  its  speculative  tendencies,  furnishes 
no  clear  picture  of  the  process  of  creation.  The  same  thing  is 
even  more  true  of  the  Shinto  cosmogony,  as  tiiken  from  the 
Preface  of  Yasumaro  to  the  Kojiki.  In  some  respects  this  de- 
scription of  the  history  of  creation  is  not  inferior  to  Genesis. 
But  its  differences,  and  its  relatively  defective  character,  be- 
come apparent  when  we  are  told  how,  after  Heaven  and  Earth 
had  parted  and  the  three  Deities  had  performed  the  commence- 
ment of  creation,  the  Passive  and  Active  Essences  developed, 
and  the  two  ])ecame  the  generatore  and  ancestors  of  all  things. 

The  principal  points  of  superiority  in  the  Hebrew  cosmogony, 
regarded  as  a  dcxitrine  of  cn^ation,  are  these  three  :  (1)  I^lohim 
is  in  the  beginning ;   (2)  Elohim  speaks  into  being  all  other 

>  See  Hopkins,  Rclipiona  of  India,  pp.   173/.,  207//. 


320  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

things  and  finally  creates  man  in  his  own  image — i.  e.,  does  not 
generate  him  ;  and  (3)  Eloliim  is  not  represented  as  developing, 
or  as  himself  developed  out  of  the  preexistent.  It  is  noteworthy, 
however,  that  all  the  ancient  religious  cosmogonies,  even  the 
Hebrew,  begin  with  some  lofty  guesses  at  a  truth  which  forms 
an  important  part  of  the  content  of  religious  faith — namel}^ 
that  all  things  have  their  origin  in  the  Divine  productive  Life ; 
but  they  then,  on  trying  to  imagine  details  as  to  the  nature  of 
the  process,  drop  down  into  the  region  of  tradition,  childish 
myth,  or  unverifiable  folk-lore.  This  is  due  to  the  fact  that, 
as  has  already  been  shown,  religion  has  no  means  of  knowing 
hoiv  God  created  the  world ;  and  pliilosophical  thinking  had 
not  at  the  time  of  these  cosmogonies  developed  so  abstract  a 
conception  as  that  of  a  creation  out  of  no  preexistent  material 
by  mere  fiat  of  will.  Even  in  Plutarch's  view  ^  the  original,  or 
prime  Creator  of  the  World,  only  bestowed  upon  the  stuff  of 
the  phenomenal  universe  the  principle  of  change  by  which, 
without  his  intervention  and  under  the  operation  of  natural 
causes,  this  stuff  is  constantly  reshaping  itself. 

The  absence  of  scientific  knowledge,  and  the  limitations  of 
man's  earliest  philosophic  endeavors,  make  all  the  more  won- 
derful the  sublime  conceptions  to  which  the  impulses  of  reli- 
gious faith,  joined  to  those  of  intellectual  curiosity,  have  raised 
the  mind  of  certain  favored  individuals.  Renouf,  in  proof  of 
the  assertion  that  John  Henry  Newman's  "  true  notion  of  God 
CO  aid  more  easily  be  matched  from  Egyptian  than  from  Greek 
or  Roman  religious  literature,"  instances  the  following:  ''The 
great  God,  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,  who  made  all  things  that 
are  ";  "  O  my  God  and  Lord,  who  hast  made  me,  and  formed 
me,  give  me  an  eye  to  see,  and  an  ear  to  hear,  thy  glories." 
According  to  jNIenant,^  the  doctrine  of  creation  taught  by 
Zoroastrianism  was  tliat  of  Judaism  rather  than  of  Hinduism  : 
"  The  universe  is  a  true  creation  in  the  full  force  of  the  word, 

1  See  De  Defectu  Orac,  36  and  37. 

2  Zoroastre,  p.  19L 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER  321 

and  not  at  all  an  emanation.  As  soon  as  the  creature  appears, 
it  is  to  remain  forever  distinct  from  the  creator."  Perhaps  the 
most  spiritual  and  ideally  lofty  of  all  the  ancient  religious 
cosmogonies  is  tliat  of  the  Avesta.  Ahura-Mazda  surrounds 
himself  with  seven  spirits  who  are  his  creatures, — good 
thoughts,  holiness,  majesty,  humility,  sanity,  obedience,  purity. 
He  created  man  for  good  thoughts,  words,  and  works  ;  and 
then  the  elements  of  fire,  water,  and  earth,  which  should  there- 
fore be  kept  pure ;  and  lastl}",  wholesome  trees  and  good 
animals.  All  noxious  and  bad  things  and  animals  were  created 
by  an  evil  spirit ;  but  religion  is  trust,  love,  and  obedience  to 
Ahura-Mazda  alone ;  and  over  all  the  evils  the  good  God  will 
conquer  at  the  last. 

It  was  from  an  intellectual  rather  than  a  more  purely  ethical 
point  of  view  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Chinese  philosopher 
Shushi,  much  later,  maintained  the  creative  activity  of  eternal 
reason  to  be  the  origin  of  the  universe  of  things  and  minds. 
''Before  the  existence  of  the  heaven  and  the  earth,  there  was 
— Reason."  "  In  the  beginning  there  was  no  being  except 
Reason."  This  eternal  reason  is  at  once  the  Great  Limit  and 
the  Limitless.  Every  particular  object  shares  in  the  Great 
Limit,  or  in  Eternal  and  Universal  Reason  ;  but  the  particularity 
of  each  is  due  to  the  quality  of  the  force  which  it  manifests. 
Equally  lofty  is  the  Buddhistic  view  of  creation,  which  ex- 
plains that  in  the  beginning  there  was  no  thing ;  all  was  emp- 
tiness and  the  five  elements  had  no  existence.  Then  Adi- 
Buddha  revealed  himself  under  the  form  of  a  flame  of  light. 
He  is  indeed  the  great  Buddha,  who  exists  of  himself.  All 
things  that  exist  in  tlie  three  worlds  have  tlieir  cause  in  him; 
lie  it  is  who  sustains  their  being.  From  liini,  and  out  of  his 
profound  mcditiition,  the  universe  has  sprung  into  life. 

A  special  relation  of  man  to  God  as  ci-eator  is  quite  uniformly 
recognized  by  the  religious  cosmogonies, — even  by  those  of  tho 
lower  order  from  the  intellectual  and  scientific  points  of  view. 
This  relation  is  more  usually  conceived  of  in  terms  of  physical 

21 


322  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

generation,  or  fatherhood,  in  the  early  stages  of  man's  religious 
development.  The  most  direct  form  of  this  relation  is  also  cus- 
tomarily regarded  as  limited  to  the  divine  ancestor,  or  to  the 
more  highly  privileged,  of  the  then  existing  race.  The  Pharaoh 
in  Egypt  was  regularly  looked  upon  as  the  son  of  the  gods  ;  ^ 
and  when  the  queen  was  the  progeny  of  a  deceased  monarch  and 
the  sister  of  her  spouse,  the  reigning  king,  she  was  called  "  the 
daughter  of  god."  Under  the  new  monarch,  however,  she 
bore  a  title  derived  from  her  relation  to  the  king,  who  is  god 
or  son  of  god ;  she  was  therefore  called  the  "  spouse  of  god," 
or  the  '*  mother  of  god."  According  to  Preiss,^  in  the  Chinese 
theology  Heaven  and  Earth  are  father  and  mother  of  all  things  ; 
and  man  stands  somehow  midway  between  this  Supreme  Pro- 
ductive Principle  and  the  host  of  lower  powers,  heavenly  and 
chthonic.  When  this  lofty  doctrine  of  his  origin  is  coupled 
with  the  ancient  and  immemorial  doctrine  of  the  Chinese  sages, 
that  man  is  by  nature  good  and  inclined  to  virtue  because  he 
received  his  nature  from  Heaven,  the  influence  which  religious 
belief  has  always  had  upon  civil  affairs  in  China  is  seen  to  have 
been,  with  good  reason,  enormous.  It  is  environment,  especially 
bad  government,  which,  according  to  Chinese  views,  leads  the 
people  astray.  In  biblical  religion,  however,  the  doctrine  of 
man's  moral  fall  is  incorporated  into  one  of  the  earliest  versions 
of  the  Hebrew  cosmogony ;  and  thus,  although  man  is  indeed 
a  special  creation  of  the  Divine  Being,  and  is  made  in  the 
Divine  image,  he  is  at  present  a  wandering  and  sinful  child. 
Christianity,  with  its  doctrine  of  redemption,  emphasizes,  on 
the  one  hand,  man's  low  moral  condition  and  need  of  God's 
help,  in  order  to  realize  worthily  the  end  of  his  creation ;  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  exalts  man's  spiritual  potentiality  and  in- 
comparable value,  since  all  his  religious  history  is  to  be  looked 
upon  as  a  manifestation,  in  the  progressive  establishment  of 
the  Kingdom  of  Redemption,  of  the  Divine  redeeming  Love. 

1  See  Erman,  ^gypten  und  ^gyptisches  Leben  im  Altertum,  p.  112/. 
3  Religionsgeschichte,  p.  38. 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER  323 

The  religious  experience  has  from  the  earliest  times  re- 
garded God  as  the  Preserver,  or  "  Upholder,"  as  well  as  the 
Creator,  of  the  world.  Little  definiteness  and  insistency,  it 
is  true,  has  been  given  to  this  conception  of  the  relations  be- 
tween the  cosmic  existences  and  processes  and  the  One  World- 
Ground.  The  reason  for  the  fact  is  obvious.  Once  made, 
things  and  selves  seem,  both  to  na'ive  and  to  scientific  realism, 
to  be  capable  of  continuing  and  upholding  themselves.  Their 
''''properties''^  are  conceived  of  as  preserving  them.  But  the 
phenomena  of  death  and  destruction  make  a  very  vivid  appeal 
to  man's  religious  beliefs  and  sentiments ;  and  therefore  de- 
stroying gods,  or  some  one  divinity  known  as  the  Destroyer, 
are  readily  projected  into  the  field  of  experience  by  the  imagi- 
nation and  thought  of  the  worshipper. 

The  attempt  to  unite  in  some  systematic  way  the  various 
divine  works  of  creation,  preservation,  and  destruction,  was 
most  elaborately  made  by  the  Hindu  religious  philosophy  of 
the  fifth  and  following  centuries  after  Christ.  By  the  earlier 
date  there  had  developed  a  sort  of  pantheistic  triad  composed 
of  Brahma,  the  All-god,  the  Creator  in  the  sense  of  being  the 
Atman  or  World-soul,  and  two  of  the  great  sectiirian  gods, 
Vishnu  and  Shiva.'  Of  these  two  Vishnu  was  originally  the 
sun,  and  Shiva  the  lightning.  But  Vishnu  had  also  been 
worshipped  as  the  All-god,  who  may,  however,  be  incarnated 
in  temporary  forms.  As  the  "  Divine  Song  "  affirms:  "  He  is 
not  lx)rn,  lie  does  not  die  at  any  time  ;  nor  \vill  He,  having 
been  born,  cease  to  l>e.  Unborn,  everlasting,  eternal,  He,  tlie 
.'incient  One,  is  not  slain  wlien  tlie  body  is  slain.  As  one  puts 
away  an  old  garment  and  puts  on  another  tliat  is  new,  so  He 
the  embodied  Spirit  puts  away  the  old  body  and  iissumes  one 
that  is  new." 

But  Shiva,  too,  must  ha  celebrated  by  his  sec tirian  devotees 
as  equally  an   All-god.     Ho  is  indeed  a  '' l)est()wer  of  gifts" 

»  On  the  history  of  thia  development,  sec  Hopkins,  Religions  of  India,  es- 
pecially pp.  410/7. 


324  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

and  a  creator ;  but  he  is  also  and  especially,  **  the  terrible, 
great,  fearful  god."  He  represents,  as  says  Professor  Hopkins, 
"the  ascetic,  dark,  awful,  bloody  side  of  religion."  Neither  of 
these  sectarian  divinities,  however,  could  dethrone,  or  prove  a 
substitute  for,  the  indestructible  Brahma.  He  could  still  say 
of  himself :  "  I  am  the  inexhaustible  seed."  "  I  am  being  and 
not-being."  "  I  am  immortality  and  death."  "  I  am  the  be- 
ginning, the  middle,  and  the  end  of  all  created  things.  I  am 
Vishnu  among  sun-gods.  .  .  .  Among  the  Rudras  I  am  Shiva. 
....  I  am  the  letter  A  among  the  letters,  and  the  compound 
of  union  among  the  compounds.  I  am  indestructible  time  and 
I  am  the  Creator.  I  am  the  death  that  seizes  all,  and  I  am 
the  origin  of  things  to  be." 

But  how  shall  this  puzzle  of  three  "  All-gods  "  be  answered, 
this  conflict  of  rival  claims  be  adjusted?  The  later  trinita- 
rian  Hindu  pantheism  is  the  answer.  Of  the  Supreme  God 
the  Bhagavadgita  declares  (iii,  272)  :  "  Having  the  form  of 
Brahma  he  creates,  having  a  human  body  (as  Krishna)  he  pro- 
tects, in  the  nature  of  Shiva  he  would  destroy  ; — these  are  the 
three  manifestations,  or  conditions,  of  the  Father-god."  Thus, 
not  so  much  "  by  unfolding  the  riches  of  the  one  great  god  " 
as  by  "  compounding  the  claims  of  three  gods  who  were  riv- 
als," ^  the  later  philosophic  Hinduism  arrived  at  the  concep- 
tion of  Deity  as  Creator,  Preserver,  and  Destroyer.  Brahma, 
or  the  neuter  and  impersonal  All,  thus  analyzes  himself,  as  it 
were,  into  the  three  personified  phases  of  the  World's  Life, 
represented  by  Brahma,  Vishnu,  and  Shiva. 

Crude  in  ideas,  inconsistent  in  logic,  and  mythological  in 
form,  as  the  later  doctrine  of  Hinduism  certainly  is,  it  is  an 
attempt  to  recognize  and  express  a  truth  of  essential  moment, 
eternal  persistence,  and  profoundest  import.  The  world  of 
human  experience  is  a  process  of  becoming,  in  which  all  indi- 
vidual things  and  selves  appear  as  arising  and  continuing 
only  for  a  time,  and  then  ceasing  to  be.     Somehow,  therefore, 

1  So  Menzies,  History  of  Religion,  p.  350. 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER  325 

the  Ground  of  tbeir  origin,  of  their  persistence,  and  of  their 
disappearance,  must  be  found  in  the  one  Being  of  the  World. 
It  is  this  truth  which  the  religious  consciousness  postulates  in 
its  doctrine  of  God  as  the  Creator,  the  Upholder,  and  the  De- 
stroyer, of  all  finite  existences.  This  truth  religious  experi- 
ence finds  necessary,  in  order  to  establish  to  its  satisfaction 
the  content  of  its  beliefs  ;  and  in  order  to  meet  the  needs  of 
its  most  profound  and  valuable  feelings.  In  making  this  pos- 
tulate of  faith,  the  religious  consciousness  sees  further  into  the 
truth  of  the  World  than  is  possible  for  descriptive  and  explan- 
atory science.  For  it  finds  the  origin,  the  upholding,  and  the 
passing  away,  of  all  finite  existences  to  be  in  the  One  planful 
Will  which  also  manifests  itself  to  piety  as  fatherly  and 
redeeming  Love. 

The  doctrine  which  refers  the  whole  process  of  world- 
building,  and  especially  the  evolution  of  spirituality  in  hu- 
manity, to  the  active  Divine  Love  in  creating,  upholding,  and 
controlling  all  beings  and  all  events,  is  preeminently  that 
adopted  by  the  reflective  thought  of  Christianity. 

In  the  Old  Testament,  apart  from  the  attempt  at  a  cosmog- 
ony in  the  earlier  chapters  of  Genesis,  no  descriptive  history 
or  ^Ma«i-scientific  theory  of  the  order  and  manner  in  which 
God  creates  and  preserves  the  world  is  anywhere  to  be  found. 
It  is  enough  that  the  presence  of  Yahweh  in  all  the  phenomena 
of  nature  should  Ije  recognized  in  poetical  language,  and  in  a 
form  to  stir  the  heart  of  man  to  wonder,  gratitude,  and  praise. 
But  as  in  other  religions,  so  particularly  in  Judaism,  God  is 
regiirded  ;us  the  Lord  of  life  and  death  ;  lie  it  is  who  giveth 
and  also  taketh  away.  He  is  also  the  Lord  of  Hosts  and  b}* 
no  means  indifferent  to  human  liistoiy, — especially  wlien  the 
interests  of  his  covenanted  people  are  concerned.  He  comes 
down  and  scatters  the  kinj^s  wliich  have  assembled  ajrainst 
Isniel  ;  and  when  he  has  conquered,  he  a-scends  on  high  ag;iin 
leading  captivity  captive.  He  makes  and  keeps  alive  every 
man  ;   for  man  is  indeed  but  clay,  until  the  breath  of  Yahweh 


326  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

has  breathed  a  soul  into  him.  When  this  breath  is  removed  by 
divine  act,  the  body  returns  to  dust.  Whether  it  can  live 
again,  God  knows  ;  but  if  it  does  live,  it  will  be  by  renewal 
of  life  through  the  same  inspiring  breath.  This  idea  of  God 
as  the  creative  and  renewing  source  of  all  life  is  continued  in 
the  New  Testament ;  but  it  is  made  more  ethical  and  spiritual, 
until  the  apocalyptic  vision  where,  on  the  testimony  of  the 
angels,  it  is  said :  "  O  Lord  God  Almighty,  which  art,  and 
wast,  and  art  to  come,"  to  Thee  belong  "  salvation,  and  glory, 
and  honor,  and  power ; "  for  Thou  art  "  Alpha  and  Omega, 
the  beginning  and  the  end." 

Christianity  expresses  its  maturer  views  as  to  the  doctrine 
of  God,  Creator,  Upholder,  and  Destroyer  of  the  generations 
of  men,  under  two  markedly  different  and  yet  not  irreconcila- 
ble forms  of  symbolism.  One  of  these,  although  it  is  not 
wanting  in  elements  which  convey  the  profoundest  specula- 
tive truths,  is  mainly  emotional  in  origin  and  of  practical 
value.  The  other,  although  it  also  appeals  to  certain  senti- 
ments and  is  of  influence  in  the  religious  life  as  an  affair  of 
conduct,  is  mainly  speculative  and  designed  to  answer  to  ra- 
tional demands.  The  one  corresponds  to  a  conception  which 
is  found  germinal  and  growing  in  all  the  various  forms  of  reli- 
gion. As  it  appears  in  Christianity,  it  is  of  Jewish  origin,  but 
springs  more  especially  out  of  Jesus'  consciousness  of  sonship 
and  moral  union  with  God.  The  other  is  not,  indeed,  wholly 
foreign  to  Old-Testament  ideas  and  figures  of  speech  ;  but  it 
is  chiefly  Greek,  both  in  origin  and  in  its  form  of  expression. 
The  one  tenet  represents  God  as  the  Lord  of  Life  and  Father 
of  man, — as  creating,  preserving,  and  dealing  with  humanity 
after  the  likeness  of  the  father's  treatment  of  his  sons.  The 
other  doctrine  accounts  for  what  the  Divine  Being  is,  and  does, 
for  tlie  race,  as  due  to  the  quickening  and  uplifting  activity  of 
the  Logos  which  proceeds  forth  from  Him.  The  creative,  up- 
holding, and  destroying  energy  of  God  is  essentially  both 
paternal  and  rational. 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER  327 

Attention  has  already  been  called  to  the  fortunate  fact  that 
the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament,  even  in  its  earliest  and 
crudest  form,  does  not  regard  the  Divine  Being  as  originating 
human  physical  or  psychical  life  by  an  act  of  generation. 
Man's  entire  being,  indeed,  comes  from  God,  but  not  in  a 
way  analogous  to  that  in  which  it  comes  from  his  human  pro- 
genitors. The  imparting  of  the  Divine  Life  to  humanity  is 
conceived  of  as  essentially  a  spiritual  affair  ;  although  the  con- 
ception of  spirit  itself  remains  all  through  the  Old  Testament 
relatively  crude  and  undeveloped.  That  God  is  the  Father 
of  men,  the  Source  of  their  life,  and  especially,  and  in  a 
unique  degree  of  the  Son  of  Man,  is  a  tenet  of  faith  which 
springs  resistlessly  forth  from  the  profoundest  depths  of  the 
consciousness  of  Jesus.  It  is  this  steadfast  consciousness  of 
living  the  life  that  is  in  God,  of  being  fully  and  unceasingly 
one,  as  son,  with  the  Father,  in  which  Jesus  finds  the  unques- 
tioned proof  for  the  reference  of  all  his  experiences  to  the  wise 
and  loving  Divine  Will.  Such  a  life — constantly  re-created  as 
it  is  from  the  exliaustless  Well  of  all  vitality — cannot  perish  ; 
it  is  in  the  Father's  hand,  and  no  man  can  pluck  it  out  of  hLs 
liand.  Moreover,  it  is  by  union  with  him,  in  the  same  vital 
way,  that  those  who  live  the  life  which  follows  the  secret  of 
Jesus,  become  partakers  of  eternal  life.  Tliey  are  branches  of 
him,  the  vine;  and  the  branches  that  remain  in  living  union 
with  the  vine,  cannot  fail  to  live  and  grow,  for  they  are  planted 
in  God.  But  this  same  God  is  the  Destroyer  as  well  as  tlie 
Creator  and  Preserver  of  human  life  ;  for  the  branches  which 
do  not  abide  in  the  vine  are  surely  doomed  to  witlier  and  to 
Ixj  ))urned.  Tliis,  too,  is  the  law  of  the  Divine  evolutionary 
procedure.  This  conception  of  si)iritual  existence  and  devel- 
opiiient  for  man  as  attainable  only  under  tlie  conditions  of  vital 
union  with  (Jod,  the  Source  of  all  Life,  is  expandt'd  in  tlie 
New  Testiunent  especially  in  the  writings  wliich  bear  the  name 
of  John. 

The  more  speculative  doctrine  which  endeavored  to  express 


328  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

both  the  transcendency  and  the  immanence  of  God,  and  to 
justify  the  unique  relation  of  humanity  to  Christ  as  the  Son  of 
God,  was  derived  largely  from  Greek  sources.  The  Old  Tes- 
tament had  imparted  majesty,  and  all  the  qualities  of  kingship 
and  rule  to  the  conception  of  God,  by  representing  him  as  act- 
ing through  mediators, — not  merely  physical  beings  and  nat- 
ural forces,  but  also  angels,  prophets,  seers,  etc.  In  the  earlier 
Christian  doctrine  the  invisible  and  mysterious  but  really  spirit- 
ual nature  of  God,  was  expressed  in  similar  ways.  The  first  con- 
ception of  the  sonship  of  Jesus  was  rather  practical  and  spirit- 
ual than  metaphysical.  The  views  of  the  earlier  apologetic 
and  Greek  development,  concerning  the  relations  of  God  to 
the  cosmic  existences  and  processes,  are  summarized  by  one 
writer  ^  in  the  following  way :  Christians  believe  in  "  a  God 
who  is  unbegotten,  eternal,  unseen,  impassible,  incomprehen- 
sible, and  uncontained ;  comprehended  by  mind  and  reason 
only,  invested  with  ineffable  light  and  beauty  and  spirit  and 
power  by  whom  the  Universe  is  brought  into  being  and  set  in 
order  and  held  firm,  through  the  agency  of  his  own  LOGOS." 
The  philosophy  of  Christianity  had,  of  course  to  attempt 
the  problem  which  is  the  crux  of  the  philosophy  and  theology 
of  all  time, — namely,  how  to  represent  to  thought  and  imag- 
ination the  method  of  procedure  by  which  the  Absolute  and 
Transcendent  Being  becomes  immanent  in  the  cosmic  processes 
and  existences  as  the  creative,  upholding,  and  destroying 
agency  of  them  all.  It  was  therefore  necessary,  on  the  one 
hand,  that  its  speculative  solution  of  this  problem  should  sa- 
credly guard  the  unity  of  God ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  that  it 
should  exalt  and  make  more  effective  the  mediating  and  re- 
deeming work  of  Christ.  That  form  of  the  Logos-doctrine 
which  may  be  called  '*  catholic  "  (leaving  out  of  account  the 
dogmatic  inquiry  whether  this  doctrine  is  defensible,  or  even 
essentially  and  permanently  "  Christian  "),  was  the  answer  which 
was  given  to  this  difficult,  and  perhaps  forever  unanswerable, 

1  Athenagoras,  Legatio,  10. 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER  329 

problem.  In  its  development  three  stages,  or  factors,  to  the 
inquiry  may  be  recognized  :(1)  As  to  the  Genesis  of  the  Logos  ; 
(2)  as  to  the  Nature  of  the  Logos ;  and  (3)  as  to  the  relation 
of  the  Logos  to  the  man  Jesus. ^  A  theory  of  cosmology  was 
to  be  incorporated  into  a  doctrine  of  the  way  of  salvation. 

The  tracing  of  the  development  of  the  Logos  doctrine  in 
the  Ijistory  of  Christian  theology  or  dogmatics,  and  the  criticism 
or  defence  of  this  doctrine,  do  not  constitute  a  part  of  our  ap- 
pointed task.  It  is  enougli  in  this  connection  that  two  features 
of  the  entire  history,  with  its  hot  debate  and  even  bloody  con- 
flicts, should  be  borne  in  mind.  One  of  these  concerns  the  in- 
estimable religious  truth  that  God  is  really  present  in  the 
world,  and,  especially,  in  human  souls  and  human  history,  as 
the  immanent  and  rational  All-Spirit ;  and  that  He  has  set  into 
reality  this,  his  abiding  spiritual  presence,  in  a  quite  uniquely 
impressive  and  effective  way,  through  the  pei-son  and  work  of 
Jesus  Christ.  But  the  other  truth  emphasizes  the  doubt,  vacil- 
lation, and  inlierent  difficulty,  if  not  impossibility,  that  belong 
to  all  attempts  to  represent  the  method  of  this  real  immanence 
in  a  completely  satisfying  way.^ 

Modern  psychological  science,  and  a  philosophy  of  mind 
which  bases  itself  upon  experience,  distinctly  favor  a  return  to 
the  position  which  interprets  tlie  immanence  of  God  in  the 
human  soul  in  the  more  practical  and  spiritual  way.     For  the 

1  On  all  this  inquiry,  compare  Hamack,  History  of  Dogma  (English 
Translation),  Vol.  I,  pp.  110,  328;  III,  1-50;  and  Hatch,  Influence  of  Greek 
Idea.s  and  Usages  upon  the  Christian  Church,  pp.  256//. 

2  For  example,  the  nature  of  the  Logos  soon  came  to  be  regarded  as  God- 
like, not  simply  by  partaking  but  by  essence  {ov<ria).  But  the  value 
and  meaning  of  owsia  becomes  doubtful;  for  it  may  be  used  as  the  equiva- 
lent of  material  substance,  or  of  abstract  substance,  or  of  the  s|x»cie8  or 
genus.  In  timo  this  term  was  made  convertible  witli  "  hypKwtasia " 
{{nr6<TTaffit), — a  word  which  was  intended  to  emphiusize  rral  e.xistonce  in 
contrast  with  mere  appearance,  or  potential  existence.  Then  }^ersona=& 
character  in  a  play,  or  a  party  in  a  juristic  sense,  became  the  equivalent 
of  "  hypoetaais. "     I.Ater  <t>v<nt  and  IIp^t<<nror  came  into  use. 


330  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

doctrine  of  *' soul-essence,"  or  "  spiritual  reality,"  or  "personal 
substance,"  which  the  later  forms  of  the  Logos-doctrine  em- 
body, is  itself  both  unscientific  and  unphilosophical.  But  the 
essential  truth  which  Christianity  postulates  as  based  upon 
a  more  profound  and  highly  illumined  experience  than  belongs 
to  the  other  great  world-religions,  remains  essentially  un- 
touclied.  This  experience  is  that  of  a  spiritual  presence  and  of 
a  moral  and  spiritual  union.  Its  essence,  or  reality,  consists  in 
just  this. 

What,  then,  is  the  essential  truthfulness  of  the  religious  doc- 
trine of  God  as  Creator,  Upholder,  and  Destroyer,  when  criti- 
cally interpreted  and  examined  in  the  light  of  modern  scientific 
and  philosophical  opinion  ?  This  question  is  answered  by  com- 
paring this  doctrine  with  the  conclusions  of  the  positive 
sciences  as  respects  the  origin,  continuance,  and  cessation  of 
the  cosmic  existences  and  forces.  In  general  it  may  be  claimed 
that  the  evolutionary  conception  of  Matter  is  not  unfavorable 
to  the  essential  truth  of  the  theistic  doctrine  of  God's  relation 
to  the  World.  On  the  one  hand,  so-called  "  matter  "  can  no 
longer  be  regarded  as  originally  a  quite  lawless  and  as  yet  un- 
ordered "  stuff,"  upon  which  mind  must  come  from  without,  as  it 
were,  in  order  to  impress  it  with  order  and  law.  Its  ''  proper- 
ties," so-called,  were  not  subsequently  imposed  as  superficial 
and  unessential  qualifications  for  its  future  work  as  a  world- 
building  material.  In  a  word,  the  doctrine  of  the  ancient  re- 
ligious cosmogonies,  which  regarded  Deity  as  an  artificer,  or 
worker-over  of  ready-made  material,  is  no  longer  tenable.  But 
equally  untenable,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  conception  which 
thinks  to  account  for  the  World's  evolution  by  ascribing  to  its 
material,  under  the  guise  of  impersonal  qualifications  of  most 
intricate  and  inconceivable  kinds,  the  necessary  equipment  for 
building  itself  without  the  presence  or  aid  of  indwelling  Will 
and  Mind. 

By  all  of  the  positive  sciences  the  World  is  now  known  as 
a  ceaseless  Becoming.     It  is,  in  fact,  a  continuous  process  of 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER  331 

change  in  time ;  and  all  individual  existences,  in  their  own 
life-history  as  well  as  in  their  changing  relations  to  other  exis- 
tences, are  parts  of  this  pi'ocess.  The  process  itself  is  brought 
about  by — is  indeed  the  expression  of,  a  vast  and  inconceiv- 
ably intricate  network  of  forces  which  co-operate  by  combina- 
tion or  collision,  to  bring  about  the  result.  But  the  World  is 
not  a  mere  Becoming ;  it  is  an  Evolution,  a  more  or  less  or- 
derly and  law-abiding  series  of  changes,  which  have  a  certain 
ideal  Unity,  and  which  are  moving  forward  toward  the  accom- 
plishment of  certain  ideal  ends.  In  this  Evolution  the  origin, 
continued  existence,  and  destruction  of  all  individual  beings, 
things  and  selves,  and  even — if  this  were  possible — of  the  ma- 
terial elements  themselves,  are  moments  in  the  world's  Time 
and  fragments,  or  factors,  in  the  world's  Energy. 

With  this  evolutionary  conception  of  the  Being  of  the 
World,  we  have  already  seen  that  the  religious  doctrine  of  God 
as  Creator,  properly  understood,  does  not  conflict.  The  essen- 
tial thing  about  the  doctrine  of  creation  is  that  the  creature 
shall  be  regarded  as  dependent  for  its  origin  upon  the  rational 
and  free  Will  of  God.  The  only  answer  which  religious  faith 
can  give  to  the  inquiry  after  the  origin  of  any  individual  ex- 
istence, or  of  the  World  as  a  whole,  is  a  reference  to  the 
Divine  Will.  But  this  Will  must  not  be  conceived  of  as  bhnd 
force,  or  as  an  unconscious  and  unintelligent  World-Ground  ; 
it  is  innnanent  and  purposeful  Reason,  as  well  as  Power,  that 
is  displayed  in  all  creation.  For  God  is  not  compelled  to  cre- 
ate;  neitlurr  is  He  unaware  of  the  causes  which  lead  to,  and 
express  themselves  in,  his  creative  acts.  The  causes  are  God's 
**  reasons  ;"  for  tlie  causes  lie  in  the  ethical  and  spiritual  Being 
of  Cfod  liiinself.  He  brinj'S  all  thing's  and  selves  into  beinf?  of 
his  own  wise  and  good  will.  Therefore  religion  sim[)ly  an- 
Hwei-s  the  child-like  question,  "  Wiio  made  the  World,  when 
fu-st  it  Ix'L^Mu  to  be?'*  by  proclaiming  its  faith  in  equally  child- 
like fasliion  :  ''God  made  the  World;  and  He  who  is  its  maker 
did  not  begin  to  Ix',  but  was,  and  is,  and  eternally  will  be."     The 


332  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

further  question,  "  Why  was  the  World  so  made  ?"  the  same 
faith  has  the  courage,  born  of  religious  experience,  to  answer : 
"  Because  God  so  willed  it,  in  his  wisdom  and  goodness,  and 
for  the  fulfillment  of  his  own  wise  and  good  purposes." 

The  time  at  which  the  world  began,  and  whether  we  con- 
ceive of  the  world  as  beginning  at  any  particular  time  or  not, 
does  not  concern  religion.  Its  answer  in  no  respect  alters  the 
relation  in  which  God  as  Creator  stands  to  those  cosmic  exis- 
tences and  processes  which  science  undertakes  to  investigate. 
As  to  the  time  of  creation — if  by  this  be  meant,  How  long  is 
it  since  the  present  elements  of  the  known  world  came  into  ex- 
istence ?  or  even.  How  many  seons  is  it  since  they  assumed 
substantially  their  present  cosmic  form? — neither  science  nor 
revelation  now  give,  or  ever  can  give,  any  trustworthy  infor- 
mation. Indeed,  the  whole  problem  of  the  absolute  origin  of 
the  world  is  essentially  insolvable  ;  but  fortunately,  it  is  of  no 
theoretical  or  practical  importance  for  either  science  or  religion. 
Both  science  and  religion  are  obligated,  if  they  desire  to  keep 
within  the  limits  of  the  known  and  the  knowable,  to  take  the 
world  as  human  experience  finds  it.  The  arguments  of  science, 
both  for  and  against  the  eternity  of  matter  and  force,  in  any 
strict  meaning  of  the  word  "  eternity,"  are  equally  inconclu- 
sive. And  as  to  religious  experience,  it  should  be  distinctly 
understood,  that  if  God  is  not  needed  now,  to  render  a  rational 
account  of  the  origin,  existence,  and  passing  away,  of  the  finite 
minds  and  finite  things  of  the  experienced  world ;  then  He  is 
not  needed  at  all.  If  religion  can  do  without  God  to  explain 
what  i.%  it  can  equally  well  do  without  Him  to  explain  what 
was^  or  what  will  he.  If  the  present  recognized  cosmic  proc- 
esses are  in  need  of  no  spiritual  Principle  to  render  them  ex- 
plicable and  effective  in  carrying  forward  the  world  to  its 
ideal  goal ;  then  they  may  be  left  to  take  care  of  themselves, 
as  it  were  from  an  eternity  ab  ante  to  an  eternity  ad  post.  For 
neither  religion  nor  science  can  profit  by  following  the  links  of  a 
logical  chain  with  an  infinite  regressus,  under  the  illusory  hope 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER  333 

of  capturing  an  abstract  Absolute  or  Prime  Cause,  at  the  end  of 
this  chain.  Both  religion  and  science  should,  the  rather,  seek 
by  insight  into  the  real  world  of  present  experience,  to  discern 
tlie  ways  of  an  immanent  and  ever-living  God.  In  this  search 
of  reason,  the  essential  reality  and  logical  cogency  of  the  dis- 
covered truths  are  not  in  the  least  disturbed  by  the  confession 
of  man's  inability  to  render  cognizable,  or  even  imaginable,  an 
absolute  beginning  of  the  world  at  some  point  in  time. 

Within  the  limits  of  experience,  and  of  the  reasonable  con- 
clusions from  known  facts  to  inferred  cosmic  processes  and 
cosmic  laws,  it  is  the  task  of  the  positive  sciences  to  tell  wlien, 
and  how,  God  creates  the  particular  existences  of  the  world. 
But  religion,  acting  in  the  spirit  of  piety,  refers  every  particu- 
lar new  existence  to  the  rational,  wise  and  good  Will  of  God. 
By  whatever  combination  of  preexisting  elements  under  the 
action  of  whatever  so-called  cosmic  forces,  this  or  that  individ- 
ual thing  or  soul  began  to  be,  it  must  still  be  piously  consid- 
ered as  a  dependent  manifestation  of  the  creative  energy  of 
the  Divine  Being.  Each  thing,  each  soul,  is  God's  creature ; 
each  status^  or  period  of  the  world's  existence,  each  pluise  of  the 
cosmic  process,  is  God's  doing.  The  philosophy  of  religion 
supports  this  tenet  of  religious  faith. 

In  spite  of  the  inability  to  solve  the  problem  of  an  absolute 
beginning  of  the  world  in  time,  both  science  and  religion  re- 
gard the  experienced  world  as  somehow  completing  a  cycle  of 
events.  The  world  we  know,  or  imagine,  begins  in  time,  con- 
tinues through  a3ons  of  time,  and  will  reach  at  last  some  go.il 
toward  which  the  entire  process  of  development  has  carried  it 
onward.  In  its  cosmogony  the  Hebrew  scriptures  represent 
Eloliim,  wlio  tvas  in  the  beginning,  as  l)eginning  to  create?  an 
orderly  world  out  of  materials  tlien  existing  in  a  stiit43  of  chaos; 
as  continuing  tljc^  work  of  creation  in  a  succession  of  jxjrioils 
cliiinicterized  by  the  origin  of  higher  and  higher  orders  of  be- 
ing ;  and  then,  finally,  as  taking  for  himself  a  Sabbath  of  rest. 
This  idea  of  (iod's  resting — in  the  sense  of  becoming  an  inac- 


334  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

tive  and  absentee  God — is  not  only  rejected  as  unworthy  by 
the  religious  consciousness  of  Jesus,  but  is  also  rendered  quite 
untenable  by  the  established  views  of  science  and  philosophy. 
The  motif  which  existed  in  the  mind  of  the  writer  of  Genesis 
— namely,  to  authenticate  the  divine  command  of  the  Sabbath 
by  the  divine  example — has  no  longer  any  bearing  on  the 
problem.  It  remains  true,  however,  that  all  the  resources  of 
human  knowledge,  now  obtained  or  presumably  obtainable, 
only  enable  us  to  paint  a  picture,  whose  frame  is  indeed  obscure 
and  expansible,  but  which  always  represents  only  a  very  small 
section  from  the  eternal  Life  of  the  Personal  Absolute.  For 
tlie  physical  sciences  this  picture  shows  a  limited  number  of 
successive  periods  in  the  self-evolving  existence  of  the  Cosmos. 
For  religion,  the  same  picture  gives  the  history  of  the  foun- 
ding, growth,  and  triumphant  establishment  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  positive  sciences,  no  physical 
thing,  or  animal  soul,  or  human  spirit,  is  created  all  at  once, 
as  it  were.  Its  creation  is  its  own  peculiar  evolution  ;  its  being 
is  its  process  of  becoming.  It  follows,  then,  that  God  the 
Preserver,  or  Upholder,  in  the  view  of  the  philosophy  of  reli- 
gion, cannot  be  an  Other  than  God  the  Creator.  In  no  case  of 
any  individual  existence,  however  insignificant  and  speedily 
transient  in  time,  does  the  creative  act  consist  in  the  placing 
of  something  already  finished  and  "  ready-made  "  within  the 
self-evolving  system  of  previously  existing  things.  Indeed, 
the  very  essential  being  of  every  particular  existence  consists 
in  its  ability  to  go  through  a  certain  series  of  changes  which 
are  peculiar  to  itself.  Even  of  the  atoms,  or  of  the  corpuscles 
which  modern  physics  thinks  itself  entitled  to  make  use  of,  in 
order  to  give  a  satisfactory  internal  constitution  to  certain 
species  of  atoms,  we  must  say  that  they — each  one — have  their 
own  peculiar  round  of  changes  to  go  through ;  their  value  in 
the  world  of  reality  consists  in  their  continued  faithful  per- 
formance of  this  task.     It  is  just  this  ability  which  designates 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER  335 

the  "  nature  "  of  the  thing.  And  its  more  common  features 
and  characteristics  are  spoken  of  as  the  "  laws  "  of  things. 

To  piety,  and  to  the  philosophy  of  religion,  this  perseverance 
of  things  along  the  courses  of  conduct  which  make  them  to 
realize  their  own  ideas,  and  to  play  their  own  part  in  the  cosmic 
complex,  is  a  manifestation  of  God  as  tlie  "Upholder"  of  all 
things.  According  to  this  view,  the  impious  man  may  be  re- 
minded that  neither  he,  nor  his  possessions,  can  be  continued 
independently  of  the  Divine  Will;  and  the  pious  man,  by  the 
same  view,  obtains  a  perfect  rest  in  God.  Tliat  things  keep  on 
existing,  just  because  they  have  existed  in  the  past,  is  as  for- 
eign to  the  conceptions  of  modern  science  as  it  is  unwelcome 
to  the  beliefs  and  sentiments  of  religion.  For,  as  has  already 
been  said,  their  very  being  does  not  consist  in  maintaining  a 
sort  of  death-like  existence  statu  quo  ;  indeed,  the  word  death- 
like cannot  be  used  in  this  connection ;  death  itself  is  change, 
with  just  as  much  of  immanent  force  and  purposeful  idea  dis- 
played by  it  as  is  displayed  by  the  phenomena  of  life.  This  de- 
nial of  the  possibility  of  any  existence  independent  of  God,  is  a 
vital  truth  with  the  religious  experience.  Therefore,  from  this 
point  of  view,  the  philosophy  of  religion  proclaims  again  the 
truth  that,  for  the  World  as  a  totality  of  cosmic  existences  and 
cosmic  processes,  its  continuance  is  an  w///7i^e/-r?/ji7f6'(?  manifesta- 
tion of  the  Divine  Will.  And  what  is  true  for  the  continued 
existence  of  the  World  as  a  totality,  is  true  for  every  moment 
and  every  change  in  the  existence  of  all  particular  existences. 
For  the  flow  of  the  Divine  energy  into  the  several  currents  of 
the  woild's  life  is  a  steady  stream,  and  it  is  He  wlio  is  the 
Ground  of  the  continued  reality  of  all  the  system  of  finiU;  things 
and  finite  selves. 

Since  the  conservation  of  things  and  of  selves  does  not  con- 
sist in  the  holding  of  tlit-m  in  stiitical  condition,  the  destruction 
or  passing  of  the  old  is  as  essential  to  their  continued  exis- 
tence Hfl  is  the  becoming  of  the  new.  Indeed,  the  two  are  re- 
verse  sides,  or  rather  complementary  phases,  of  one  and  the 


336  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

same  evolutionary  process.  Conservation  involves  destruction. 
If,  therefore,  God  is  to  be  the  Creator  and  Upholder  of  a 
World  which  under  existing  conditions  is  a  system  of  beings 
in  a  process  of  development,  He  must  also  be  the  destroyer  as 
well.  While  this  is  true  even  of  the  relatively  most  unchange- 
able of  material  objects,  it  is  more  obviously  true  of  all  things 
that  live  and  grow.  Metabohsm — or  the  displacement  and  ejec- 
tion of  worn-out  material  by  new  material  appropriated  from  the 
world's  supply — is  the  essential  process  by  which  the  units  of 
the  living  organism  continue  in  existence.  By  tlie  same  proc- 
ess, multiplied  millions  of  times  over,  the  organisms  of  all  liv- 
ing creatures  support  themselves  and  continue  to  be. 

The  multiplication,  conservation,  and  development  of  species, 
is  also  a  ceaseless  process  of  destruction  and  reconstruction  car- 
ried on  in  accordance  with  immanent  controlling  ideas.  In  the 
larger  world  of  all  plant  and  animal  life,  the  succession  and 
improvement  of  species  takes  place  in  the  same  way.  It  is  of 
man,  as  the  most  complex  and  highly  organized  of  all  known 
existences,  both  physically  and  psychically  considered,  that  this 
creation  and  preservation  by  a  process  involving  destruction  is 
most  impressively  true.  Thus  the  individual  human  being 
comes  to  be,  continues  to  exist,  and  passes  away.  The  history 
of  the  human  species,  in  all  the  forms  of  its  development,  illus- 
trates the  same  truth.  Race  after  race  arises,  propagates  itself, 
decays,  and  dies,  in  order  to  make  way  for,  or  to  contribute 
some  needed  element  to,  the  evolution  of  the  human  race.  And 
in  that  spiritual  kingdom,  upon  whose  realities  and  ideals  the 
faith  of  religion  fixes  its  eye,  life  is  secured  and  conserved  only 
by  losing  it ;  the  members  of  this  kingdom,  and  the  institutions 
they  build,  are  ever  somehow  undergoing  a  wonderful  and 
mysterious  process  of  destruction  and  reconstruction.  For  the 
King  of  the  kingdom  is  the  Destroyer,  as  He  is  also  the  Creator 
and  Upholder.  Its  law  of  growth  is  to  become  as  a  grain  of 
mustard  seed,  or  a  field  sown  with  wheat,  having  tares  to  be 
plucked  up  and  needing  constantly  the  purification  of  burning. 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER  337 

Among  the  speculative  questions  in  which  the  philosophy  of 
religion  has  no  small  interest,  as  connected  with  its  view  of  the 
Divine  Being  in  relation  to  the  cosmic  processes  of  creation, 
conservation,  destruction,  and  re-creation,  are  those  in  debate, 
from  time  immemorial,  between  Realism  and  Idealism.  It 
would  seem,  however,  that  certain  factors  from  both  these 
philosophical  systems  are  needed  in  order  to  validate  the  reli- 
gious view  of  the  world  in  a  semi-logical  way.  That  solipsistic 
idealism  which  denies  that  the  world  of  things  has  any  reality 
independent  of  the  finite  subject,  and  whicli  considers  the  essen- 
tial being  of  things  to  be  exhausted,  as  it  were,  by  the  repeated 
and  collective  experiences  of  humanity,  would  seem  to  make 
faith  in  God  as  the  World-Ground  irrational  by  making  the 
world  itself  unreal.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Kantian  concep- 
tion of  reality  as  noumenal,  or  Thing-in-itself,  and  so  forever 
excluded  from  the  realm  of  the  knowable,  considered  as  an  ex- 
perienced world,  is  destructive  of  the  ontological  value  of 
that  procedure  of  intellect  by  which  the  philosophy  of  religion 
thinks  to  establish  the  conception  of  God  as  the  Creator,  Up- 
holder, and  Destroyer  of  cosmic  existences.  Any  of  the  several 
forms  of  the  doctrine  of  the  World  as  Maya — illusory  and  like 
the  fleeting  shapes  of  a  dream — makes  it  illogical  to  regard  the 
cosmic  existences  and  events  as  a  trustwortliy  manifestation  of 
an  immanent,  rational  Will  and  Mind.  And,  in  fact,  such 
Idealism  has  been  historically  associated  either  with  Pantheism, 
or  with  the  effort  (as  in  Kant's  case)  to  arrive  at  the  tmnscen- 
dental  realities  in  which  religion  places  its  confidences,  in  some 
other  than  a  truly  and  completely  rational  manner.  For  a 
rational  and  ontologically  valid  interpretation  of  religious  ex- 
perience it  seems  necessary  tliat  the  existences,  forces,  and  proc- 
esses of  the  cosmic  system  should  Ivtve  a  reality  which  is  not 
imparted  to  them,  or  constructed  for  them,  by  the  cognitive 
activity  of  the  human  subject.  That  Ood  made  the  World — 
or  ratlier,  that  Gnl^  by  a  ceaseless  process  of  creation,  uphold- 
ing, and  destroying,  is  making  the   World — is  the  doctrine  of 

22 


338  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

religion.  That  the  human  Ego  makes  the  World,  and  that  this 
"Ego-made"  World  has  only  the  "appearance  "  of  reality,  or 
is  only  "  phenomenally  real,"  is  a  tenet  of  speculative  philoso- 
phy which  appears  antithetic  to  the  postulates  and  convictions 
of  religion. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Realism  \yhich  recognizes  in  the 
World  nothing  but  the  cosmic  existences,  forces,  and  proc- 
esses, as  the  positive  sciences,  in  however  justifiable  manner 
from  their  proper  point  of  view,  are  wont  to  do,  is  even  yet 
more  destructive  of  the  rational  grounds  of  religious  beliefs, 
sentiments,  and  practices.  It  is  to  an  Ideal  Unity,  which  is 
not  a  mere  idea,  but  is  an  immanent  and  unitary,  real  Being  of 
the  World,  that  the  highest  religious  experience  of  human- 
ity responds.  To  this  Being,  this  experience,  when  critically 
examined  and  rationally  interpreted,  awards  the  guaranty  of 
an  Ultimate  and  Supreme  Reality.  As  the  idea  of  It  de- 
velops in  the  experience  of  the  race,  the  Reality  is  better  com- 
prehended as  corresponding  to  the  Ideal  of  the  race.  From  the 
highest  religious  point  of  view,  it  is  made  the  Object  of  reli- 
gion, as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  Thus  humanity's  Ideal  is  recog- 
nized, with  an  appropriate  filial  attitude  by  all  personal  finite 
spirits,  as  the  Ultimate  and  Supreme  Reality,  the  true  Being  of 
the  World. 

As  to  the  precise  manner  and  degree  of  reality  which  should 
be  ascribed  to  the  different  finite  existences,  and  as  to  the  exact 
way  in  which  we  ought  to  conceive  of  the  inodiis  operandi  of 
God  in  his  progressive  Self -revelation,  religious  experience  has 
little  to  impart.  It  can  the  more  safely  leave  these  problems 
to  the  various  schools  of  science  and  philosoph}^  About  their 
most  probable  solution,  the  existing  schools,  and  all  schools  to 
follow,  during  the  indefinite  seons  of  the  remaining  world's 
time,  will  probably  continue  curiously  to  inquire.  The  object 
of  such  inquiry  cannot  properly  be  said  to  be  "  transcendent," 
in  the  Kantian  meaning  of  the  word.  Its  answer  is  not,  in- 
deed, of  such  a  nature  as  to  put  it  essentially,  and  from  the 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER  339 

beginning,  beyond  the  limits  of  all  possible  experience.  But 
the  complete  answer  is  essentially  too  deep  in  its  hiding  places, 
and  too  boundless  in  the  stretches  of  space  and  time  which  it 
covers,  ever  to  fall  wholly  within  the  field  covered  by  human 
experience.  ^leantime  and  always,  however,  the  faith  of  reli- 
gion in  God  as  the  Creator,  Upholder,  and  Destroyer  of  the 
cosmic  existences  and  forces  can  be  held  in  tlie  interests  of  a 
rational  explanation,  as  well  as  of  a  devout  and  efficient  life. 

The  supremely  important  thing  for  the  religious  conscious- 
ness is,  of  course,  that  Man  himself  shall  be  consciously  and 
voluntarily  placed  in  right  relations  to  God  as  his  Creator, 
Preserver,  and  tlie  Ruler  of  his  destiny.  With  piety  it  is  es- 
sential that  human  life  and  death  should  be  in  God's  safe  keep- 
ing. In  order  to  find  the  fullest  satisfaction  for  liis  religious 
needs  and  aspirations  man  must  believe  himself  to  be  the  crea- 
ture of  God,  and  yet  capable  of  attaining  the  abiding  life  in 
God  by  becoming  liis  son  in  a  moral  and  spiritual  union  with 
llim.  This  new  creation  of  man,  to  which  piety  aspires  and 
whicli  it  is  the  promise  of  the  religions  of  salvation  and  espe- 
cially of  Christianity  to  impart,  cannot  be  hoped  for  or  ol> 
tiiined  as  tlie  resulting  product  of  cosmic  processes  when  these 
processes  are  regarded  as  themselves  devoid  of  all  direction 
by  an  indwelling  rational  and  etliical  life.  In  order,  then,  to 
place  upon  good  and  defensi))le  grounds  the  hopes  of  religion, 
God  nnist  be  conceived  of  as  the  Moral  Ruler  and  Redeemer 
of  mankind.  This  special  work  of  the  "  iieiv  creation  "  of  hu- 
manity, which  involves  the  originating  and  development  of  a 
capacity  for  sj)iritual  life,  is  the  cliief  concern  of  the  religious 
view  of  God's  relations  to  the  Wcjrld  of  thini^s  and  selves. 

Hut  the  creation  of  the  "over-man"  is  an  intricate  and  in- 
definitely prolonged  evolutionary  process.  The  origin  of 
spirituality  in  finite  things  can  no  longer  Ik?  thought  of  as  an 
endcjwment,  once  for  all,  with  body  and  mind  ca])ablo  of  re- 
sponding to  the  highest  moral,  justhetical,  and  religious  luspira- 
tions  and  ideals.     Neither  in  the  case  of  the  individual,  nor  in 


340  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

that  of  the  species,  is  this  kind  of  Divine  creative  activity  like 
the  launching  from  the  well-greased  ways  into  smooth  water 
of  a  ship  that  is  already  full-iigged,  fully  stored,  and  fully 
manned.  There  is  no  "common  clay"  of  personality  from 
which  the  individual  human  being  may  be  constructed  as  a 
piece  broken  off  from  the  gross  lump  of  humanity.  God's  ac- 
tivity in  creating  and  upholding  the  spirit  in  man  is  co-exten- 
sive with  the  history  of  the  development  of  the  human  race. 

In  studying  the  forces  operative  in  the  creation  of  finite 
spirits,  the  part  that  physical  nature  has  played  must  be  every- 
where duly  recognized.  What  the  natural  sciences  describe 
as  man's  discipline  from  his  environment,  in  endurance,  cour- 
age, industry,  and  in  the  intelligent  use  of  his  powers  of  body 
and  mind,  is,  from  religion's  point  of  view,  God's  work  creative 
and  preservative  of  spirituality  in  man.  From  the  evolution- 
ary standpoint  the  credit  for  this  is  due  to  the  Divine  Being  im- 
manent in  the  World;  even  when  the  so-called  natural  forces 
seem  themselves  to  be  waging  a  fierce  and  unfeeling  conflict 
with  the  lower  forms  of  a  beginning  spiritual  life.  God  the 
Destroyer  is  present  even  here  as  God  the  Creator  and  Upholder. 
The  same  truth  enlightens  and  steadies  the  mind,  as  it  observes 
the  evolution  of  spirituality  in  man  through  the  more  interior 
and  trying  conflict  between  his  lower  nature  and  the  higher  and 
more  rational  powers,  when  these  latter  dawn  and  rise  slowly  to 
the  place  of  control.  For  the  ideals  which  now  begin  to  ap- 
pear prove  to  be  indomitable  forces,  that  greaten  and  lift  up 
the  whole  life  of  humanity.  And,  finally,  it  is  such  religions 
as  Zoroastrianism,  early  Buddhism,  and,  above  all,  the  religion 
of  Christ,  which  accentuate  the  conflict  between  the  "  world," 
as  comprising  those  enticements  to  prize  and  seek  the  lower 
values  of  which  man  has  experience,  and  that  Kingdom  of  God 
in  which  all  the  supreme  spiritual  and  ideal  values  are,  so  to 
say  merged. 

In  all  this  process  of  the  evolution  of  man  as  spirit,  man 
himself  has  taken  no  unimportant  part.     For  selves  cannot  be 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER  341 

made  from  without,  or  by  other  selves,  but  must  also  always 
be  self-made.  Such  a  view  of  the  origin,  continuance,  and 
possible  destruction  of  a  true  Self,  accords  with  all  that  we 
know  about  the  subject  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  psychol- 
ogy and  metaphysics  of  mind.  The  reality  of  the  human  per- 
son is  always  a  development,  admitting  of  different  degrees, 
and  having  its  many  conditions  and  phases  as  a  process  biking 
phice  in  time  ;  but  it  is  also  always  a  se(/'-development.  To 
quote  the  summary  of  arguments  given  elsewhere  in  detail ;  ^ 
"  The  peculiar,  the  only  intelligible,  and  indubitable  reality 
which  belongs  to  Mind  («.  e.,  the  human  mind)  is  its  being  for 
itself,  by  actual  functioning  of  self-consciousness,  of  recogni- 
tive  memory,  and  of  thought."  And  in  all  these  forms  of 
functioning,  self-determining  will  is  ever  present,  as  the  'Mieart 
of  the  heart"  of  the  human  Self.  But  every  man's  making  of 
himself  is  none  the  less  the  work  of  God  in  creating  and  up- 
holding the  spirit  that  is  in  the  man. 

In  some  such  way  the  science  and  philosophy  of  the  mind 
corroborates  the  postulate  of  religious  experience.  And  we 
may  say  with  a  recent  writer  on  this  subject  i'^  ''The  reality  of 
the  Ego  l)elongs  to  the  metaphysical  presuppositions  of  re- 
ligion." The  creation  of  a  Self  is,  therefore,  always  a  two- 
sided  affair.  Every  Ego  becomes,  and  continues  t<">  be,  a  real 
person,  just  so  soon,  and  just  as  long,  and  just  as  completely, 
as  it  is  actuall}^  able  by  self-activity,  as  self-conscious  will,  to 
construct  in  a  living  process  its  selfhood  in  this  way.  Actually 
to  l)econie  a  self-conscious,  knowing,  and  self-determining  will, 
is  an  achievement  in  which  this  very  same  developing  Self 
takes  part.  But  this  activity  is  also  a  gift  of  God,  and  it  is 
constantly  sustained  by  God  ;  it  is  His  immanent,  rational  Will 
which  ever  constitutes  and  upholds  this  self-hood  of  eveiynian. 
All  this  Ix'ing  which  I  properly  call  7fiine  is  a  being   in    llim; 

i  See  the  uuthor'.s  Philosophy  of  Mitul,  wlierc  this  conchiiiiun  is  ettabUshed 
in  clet4iil. 

>  A.  Domer,  RcHgionaphilosophic,  p.  214. 


342  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

whether  I  will  it  or  not,  and  whether  I  know  it  or  not,  I  am 
absolutely  dependent  upon  him  for  its  existence  and  its  exer- 
cise. By  virtue  of  these  divinely  imparted  and  divinely  sus- 
tained powers,  I  take  part  in  the  creation  and  conservation  of 
my  Selfhood.  This  co-operation  renders  me  a  Self, — apart  from 
God  and  over  against  God  ;  but  at  the  same  time,  it  is  in  this 
power  to  be  myself  that  the  highest  potency  of  my  being  in 
God  consists ;  because  this  is,  of  all  my  being,  most  like  the 
being  of  God.  It  is,  therefore,  the  self-conscious  choice  of,  and 
the  steady  adherence  to,  this  divine  ideal  of  a  real  spiritual 
Selfhood  which  makes  it  possible  for  man  to  realize  his  peculiar 
kinship  to  God. 

Religion  maintains  that  the  conflict  with  evil,  and  the  triumph 
over  evil  which  is  at  the  same  time  divinely  induced  and  self- 
determined,  is  the  supreme  good  possible  for  man  within  the 
sphere  in  which  he  has  been  divinely  set.  It,  and  not  the 
successful  seizure  and  control  of  physical  goods,  is  man's  su- 
preme good.  But  this  good  is  only  the  beginning  of  a  good 
which  will  come  to  humanity  in  the  form  of  that  *'  far-off  di- 
vine event "  which  is  to  include  all  the  ideals  of  value.  A 
life  of  conflict,  and  of  triumph  through  conflict  is,  indeed,  the 
greatest  possible  good  that  can  be  realized  here  and  now ; 
and  yet  the  anticipations  of  religion  agree  in  saying,  in  the 
words  of  Luther  :  "  It  is  not  the  End,  but  the  Way."  Thus  we 
are  brought  back  to  the  thought  that  man's  religious  experience 
is  of  a  process  that  is  necessary  for  the  development  of  spirit- 
uality ;  and  that  this  particular  aspect  of  his  total  development 
is  dynamically  related  to  all  those  other  aspects  to  which  the 
positive  sciences  give  their  especial  attention.  This  is  but  to 
say,  that  man's  evolution  is  the  manifestation  of  the  creative, 
upholding,  and  disciplinarj^  presence  of  that  perfect  Ethical 
Spirit  in  whom  the  faith  of  religion  is  firmly  fixed. 

It  is  the  feeling  of  the  value  of  this  doctrine  of  man's  cease- 
less dependence  upon  God,  on  the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  of  his  capacity  to  take  a  responsible  part  in  his  own 


GOD  AS  CREATOR  AND  PRESERVER  343 

spiritual  development,  which  has  made  Christian  theology  so 
sensitive  to  the  opinions  of  science,  and  of  the  different  schools 
of  philosopliy,  as  to  man's  place  in  Nature,  as  to  the  nature  of 
the  human  Self,  and  as  to  the  personal  relations  of  this  self  to 
the  Infinite  and  Absolute  Divine  Being.  What  religion  aims 
chiefly  to  secure  is  a  rational  ground  for  the  ethico-religious 
virtues  of  liurnility,  gratitude,  and  tlie  spirit  of  obedience  and 
service.  But  it  cannot  sacrifice  man's  relatively  independent 
personality  to  demands  for  a  spurious  humility  ;  nor  can  it 
foster  genuine  gratitude  by  denying  the  dependence  of  truly 
virtuous  character,  and  of  true  piety,  upon  the  choice  of  the 
human  individual.  Moreover,  the  obedience  which  religion 
asks,  and  the  service  which  it  prizes,  are  not  of  the  nature  of  a 
psychical  mechanism  which  runs  true  because  it  is  bound  blindly 
and  unsympathetically  to  do  its  maker's  will.  On  the  con- 
trary, genuine  piety,  and  tlie  growth  of  all  the  ethico-religious 
virtues,  are  quite  impossible  practically,  and  are  even  theoreti- 
cally inconceivable,  without  that  constant  conviction  of  depen- 
dence upon  the  Infinite  Spirit  in  which  the  best  humility,  the 
warmest  gratitude,  and  the  most  cheerful  and  efficient  obedience 
have  their  roots.  Such  piety  constantly  reminds  itself:  "I 
truly  live,  according  to  the  fulness  of  the  Divine  Life  in  me." 
And  when  this  twofold  aspect  of  the  one  life  is  recognized  as 
somehow  forming  one  truth,  and  is  greeted  with  those  convic- 
tions and  made  to  serve  those  practical  purposes  in  which  the 
interests  of  religion  are  concerned,  the  illustration  and  enforce- 
ment of  the  details  of  the  divine  methods  in  the  creation,  pres- 
ervation, and  successive  passing-away,  of  the  generations  of 
men  are  left  to  science  to  discover.  The  reconciliation  of  the 
points  of  view  from  wliich  these  two  aspects  of  the  origin,  pres- 
ervation, and  destruction  of  human  lif«' — the  scientific  and  the 
religious — appear,  iM*comes  a  problem  for  the  philosophy  of 
religion  to  consider  with  ever  renewing  industry  and  zeal. 


CHAPTER  XL 

GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE 

Those  conceptions  in  which  religious  experience  expresses — 
although  largely  in  symbolic  or  figurative  speech — its  most  val- 
uable beliefs  and  cherished  sentiments  regarding  the  relations 
of  the  World  to  God,  are  dependent  for  their  rational  justifi- 
cation, in  a  very  special  manner,  upon  the  validity  of  our  ideas 
of  personal  being  and  personal  relations.  For  the  history  of 
humanity  is  understood  by  the  greater  religions  as  a  totality 
which  has  a  profound  ethical  import,  and  which  rests  upon  a 
sure  basis  in  the  ontological  value  of  ethical  ideals.  This  his- 
tory may,  indeed,  be  considered  from  different  points  of  view ; 
but  as  it  is  viewed  by  these  religions,  it  bears  the  marks  of 
some  sort  of  a  moral  government.  When  regarded  as  having 
an  evolutionary  character  and  as  being  a  real  advance  of  the 
race  toward  moral  ideals,  it  is  at  least  conceivable  in  terms 
of  the  history  of  a  redemptive  process.  The  very  essence  of 
Christianity  consists  in  the  adoption  of  this  point  of  view ;  its 
life-history  is  the  progressive  realization  of  the  redemption  of 
the  race.  Stripped  of  the  characteristics  which  make  it  an 
ethical  Uplift  of  Humanity,  it  loses  all  its  claims  to  distinctive 
excellence  ;  failing  in  this  historical  task,  it  loses  all  right  to 
success  in  its  missionary  enterprise.  But  what  is  preeminently 
true  of  the  Christian  religion  is  true  in  a  subordinate  way  of 
such  religions  as  Judaism,  Zoroastrianism,  Buddhism,  and  even 
of  the  better  side  of  Islam. 

Now  unless  God  is  Person,  in  the  fullest  conceivable  mean- 
ing of  the  word,  and  unless  men  are  true  persons,  in  no  su- 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE   345 

perficial  or  illusory  meaning  of  the  same  word,  there  can  be  no 
such  reality  as  Divine  Government.  To  be  Moral  Ruler,  in 
any  conceivable  meaning  of  the  phrase,  God  must  be  some- 
thing more  than  impersonal  Force  or  Law,  or  even  Personal 
Absolute — with  no  more  significance  attached  to  this  latter 
phrase  than  philosophy  has  often  assigned  to  it.  The  Being 
of  the  World,  conceived  of  as  an  all-inclusive  mechanism,  self- 
evolving  and  self-explanatory,  cannot  stand  in  relations  of 
moral  rule  toward  individual  human  beings  ;  or  toward  these 
same  beings  when  considered  from  the  point  of  view  of  their 
social  development.  Mechanism  cannot  govern  its  own  parts, 
"  morally."  An  Absolute,  regarded  merely  as  personal,  might 
be  a  moral  ruler  over  certain  of  its  creatures,  if  it  chose  to  be 
so.  But  an  absolute  and  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  mu8t  be  a 
"  moral  ruler,"  in  the  fullest  meaning  of  this  phrase.  For 
this  "  must-be  "  is  not  of  the  nature  of  a  compulsion  arising 
from  without ;  it  is  a  holy  and  blessed  choice  which  expresses 
the  essential  nature  of  the  perfection  of  such  a  Spirit. 

Equally  plain,  though  not  of  the  same  nature,  is  the  neces- 
sity that  man  sliall  have  attained  at  least  the  beginnings  of  a 
capacity  for  personal  relations  and  personal  development,  in 
order  to  be  a  subject  of  moral  government.  Things  cannot  be 
''governed  "  in  any  proper  ethical  meaning  of  the  word.  Ani- 
mals may  be  said  to  be  governed,  only  so  far  as  ^wai^Z-pei-sonal 
characteristics  and  capacities  are  assigned  to  them.  In  the 
lower  forms  of  religious  belief,  indeed,  little  or  no  distinction 
is  Miiide  ill  tliis  regard  between  man  and  the  lower  animals. 
Some  of  the  latter  are  readily  imagined  to  l)e  upon  preferred 
terms  of  a  political  and  social  order  with  the  divine  beings  ; 
certiiin  animals  are  more  nearly  allied  to  the  divine  nature  than 
are  some  men.  But  in  the  more  sober  reflections  of  tlie  ethi- 
cally developed  religions,  it  is  man,  a.s  god-like  in  his  personal 
Ixiing  and  as  having  the  eapacity  for  a  moral  and  spiritual  de- 
velopment, who  is  the  favored,  if  not  the  sole,  subject  of  the 
moral  rule  of  (Jod. 


346  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

It  is  just  at  this  point,  however,  that  the  philosophy  of  reli- 
gion encounters  some  of  its  most  persistent  and,  in  certain 
respects,  insurmountable  difficulties.  Therefore,  a  return  to 
impersonal,  or  to  imperfectly  personal,  or  to  mystical  and  pan- 
theistic conceptions  of  God,  of  humanity,  and  of  the  relations 
between  the  two,  so  often  occurs  at  this  point.  We  have 
already  found  frequent  occasion  to  remark  how  the  modus  oper- 
andi of  the  immanent  agency  of  a  personally  transcendent 
God  is  the  problem  which  forms  the  crux  for  all  the  schools  of 
religious  philosophy.  It  is  in  the  case  of  man,  however,  that 
this  problem  becomes  at  the  same  time  most  important,  most 
sensitive  to  any  rude  handling  of  its  various  faces,  and  most 
expressive  of  religious  experience.  God  is  Absolute  Person 
and  perfect  Ethical  Spirit ;  only  as  such  can  he  be  the  Moral 
Ruler  and  Redeemer  of  man.  Personal  relations,  therefore, 
must  be  established  and  maintained  between  God  and  man ; 
otherwise  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  moral  government. 

But  how  can  Absolute  and  Infinite  Personality  coexist  with 
a  multiplicity  of  real  finite  personalities  ;  and,  more  particu- 
larly, how  can  other  than  merely  seeming  and  illusory  personal 
relations  exist  between  the  two  ?  The  One  Self  must,  we  are 
told,  be  absolute  and  infinite,  in  order  to  deserve  the  predi- 
cates and  attributes,  which  belong  to  God.  The  many  selves 
have  their  limited  and  conditioned  existences  as  parts  of  the 
world,  only  because  they,  too,  are  dependent  manifestations  of 
God.  Their  life,  which  appears  to  themselves  and  to  one  an- 
other, as  at  least  partiall}^  that  of  an  independent  self-being  and 
self-development,  is,  after  all,  in  reality  only  their  being  in 
God,  and  their  continuing  to  be  by  the  ceaselessly  creative  and 
unholding  Will  of  God.  How  shall  such  relations  be  realized 
in  consistency  with  the  demands  of  religious  experience  ?  This 
is  the  problem  which  underlies  every  theory  of  the  divine 
government  of  the  world.  Religion  answers  the  problem 
with  its  conception  of  God  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  immanent 
in  human  history  as  man's  moral  Ruler  and  Redeemer,  and  op- 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE        347 

erating  in  the  totality  of  human  experience  as  Providence; 
and  in  the  form  of  revelation  and  inspiration. 

At  the  stage  of  the  discussion  already  reached,  little  more  is 
necessary  tlian  to  refer  to  the  conclusions  of  the  previous  chap- 
ters, respecting  the  predicates  and  attributes  of  Divine  Being, 
concerning  Nature  and  the  Supernatural  and  concerning  the 
immanence  and  the  transcendence  of  God.  It  has  already  been 
shown  that  by  the  infinity  of  the  Divine  Being  the  philosophy 
of  religion  does  not  undei"stand  the  all-comprehending  nature 
of  this  Being  in  any  merely  quantitative  or  ^?^as /-mathematical 
fashion.  It  can  scarcely  be  too  often  remembered  that  the  re- 
lations of  the  Infinite  One  to  the  finite  many  are  not  to  be 
worked  out  like  sums  in  arithmetic  or  geometry ;  neither  are 
they  to  be  adequately  symbolized  by  terms  of  calculus  or 
quaternions.  And  as  for  *'  the  Absolute,"  in  the  meaning  of 
''  the  Unrelated,"  or  Unknowable  *'  Thing-in-Itself,"  we  have 
once  for  all  relegated  this  lifeless  abstraction  to  the  "  death- 
kingdom  "  of  barren  and  negative  ideas.  Nor  is  any  one  of 
the  predicates  or  moral  attributes  of  God  so  to  be  conceived  of 
as  to  exclude  the  possession  by  man  of  the  same  predicates  and 
moral  attributes  in  his  own  limited  and  imperfect  way.  God's 
o77?w/-potency  does  not  prevent  human  beings  from  the  posses- 
sion, or  the  progressive  realization,  of  just  so  much,  and  such 
kind  of  potencies  as  are  in  fact  their  own.  On  the  contrary, 
the  former  is  the  real  ground  and  guaranty  of  the  latter.  God's 
om?i /-presence  in  no  way  interferes  with  my  being  to  myself 
here-and-now  present ;  or  with  tlie  presence  of  other  things  ami 
selves  tlien-and-there.^  Nor,  again,  does  tlie  divine  o;;j;//- 
science  make  any  man  less  wise  or  less  foolish  than  he 
really  is. 

Witli  the  sentiment  which  ascrilx's  all  human  fjoodness  to 
a  Divine  Source,  the  pious  soul   has   been  famili;ir  in  all  re- 

'  Most  of  the  difriciiltiea  and  antiiioinicM  which  have  clianicteriaed  both 
orthfKlox  thcolo^^  and  pantheistic  phil()sf)phy  upon  these  points,  conic  from 
a  thoroughly  mistaken  psycljoloRy  and  metaphysics  of  the  Self. 


348  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ligions,  and  among  all  peoples,  that  have  reached  a  certain  stage 
of  race-culture.  "  God  be  praised ;"  and  "  To  God  be  the  glory;" 
— these  are  exclamations  of  the  most  mature  religious  expe- 
rience in  view  of  all  the  triumphs  of  truth  and  righteousness 
over  conflicting  forces ;  or  at  the  discovery  of  what  is  true  and 
good  in  unexpected  places,  and  in  extraordinary  degree.  But 
these  same  individuals  and  peoples  whose  language  abounds  in 
such  phrases,  are,  above  all  others,  those  which  are  also  most 
ready  to  admit  the  reality  of  human  responsibility,  as  well  as 
the  justice  of  the  divine  discipline  and  retribution,  even  when 
it  bears  most  heavily  upon  themselves.  With  this  sentiment 
goes  the  more  or  less  instinctive  or  highly  intelligent  shrink- 
ing which  piety  feels,  from  regarding  God  as  the  author  of  evil 
— especially  of  that  evil  which  the  ethico-religious  conscious- 
ness regards  as  sin.  The  spirit  of  piety  is  unwilling,  even  in 
the  interests  of  a  logical  consistency,  to  bring  any  taint  of  un- 
wisdom or  moral  obliquity  upon  the  perfection  of  that  Ethical 
Spirit  which  is  the  Reality  of  religion's  most  precious  Ideal. 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  problem  of  man's  moral  freedom, 
and  the  yet  larger  problem  of  moral  evil,  are  both  involved  in 
the  effort  to  imagine  how  strictly  moral  relations  can  exist  be- 
tween an  Absolute  and  Infinite  Person  and  a  multitude  of  finite 
and  dependent  personalities.  The  discussion  of  the  problem 
which  underlies  the  religious  doctrine  of  the  Divine  Govern- 
ment of  the  World,  therefore,  soon  meets  with  difficulties  of 
a  sort  that  cannot  be  wholly  removed.  This  fact  may  be  admit- 
ted without  argument.  Such  an  admission,  however,  is  far 
from  the  conclusion  that  the  intrinsic  nature  of  these  problems 
furnishes  a  legitimate  ground  for  charging  human  reason  with 
hopeless  and  inescapable  internal  contradictions. 

Contradictions  between  human  freedom  and  the  ethically  per- 
fect government  ot"  jin  Absolute  Person  exist  only  when,  either 
on  tlie  one  hand  tho  self-determination  of  the  human  will  is 
understood  in  a  too  nieclianical  fashion;  or,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  action  of  the  Divine  Will  upon  the  human  will  is  conceived 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE       349 

of  in  too  absolute  fashion.^  But  a  relation  of  wills  is  intrinsic 
cally  not  of  a  mechanical  character ;  all  figures  of  speech  taken 
from  mechanical  relations  as  subject  to  quantitative  measure- 
ments fly  wide  of  the  mark,  when  directed  to  this  relation. 
This  is  no  more  true,  and  is  scarcely  any  less  true,  when  the 
wills  of  two  finite  selves  are  under  consideration.  How  I  can, 
by  willing,  influence  another  will,  may  be  to  me  a  mystery ;  it 
may  remain  a  mystery  for  all  human  thinking,  until  the  end  of 
time.  But  that  it  is  so,  and  that  its  being  so,  does  not  destroy 
the  consciousness  of  moral  freedom  or  impair  the  entire  fabric 
of  human  society  which  is  built  upon  this  consciousness,  re- 
mains no  less  a  fact  of  experience.  The  fact  of  self-activit}-, 
culminating  in  the  choice  of  ideal  ends — which  fact,  however, 
and  also  all  realization  of  those  ideal  ends,  are  dependent  upon 
the  influence  and  inter-action  of  wills — appears  to  be  an  expe- 
rience beyond  which  we  cannot  go.  I  choose,  and  I  assert  my 
self-active  and  independent  being  by  my  choice  ;  but  I  choose 
as  a  being,  dependent  upon  and  environed  by,  other  beings  in 
the  One  Being  of  the  World.  I  will  to  influence  others,  as 
myself  a  will ;  but  in  this  willing,  I  acknowledge  and  I  realize 
my  debt  of  influence  received  from  others. 

A  yet  more  fundamental  examination  of  this  problem  of 
moral  freedom,  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  philosophy  of 
knowledge,  shows  that  the  mysterious  character  of  the  ulti- 
mate facts  involved  is  not  so  essentially  different  from  that 
mystery  which  eludes  all  attempts  at  investigation,  because  it 
marks  the  limits  of  the  knowable.  Physical  science  explains 
all  the  transactions  which  occur  in  the  world  of  its  experience 
by  referring  them  to  interdependent  and  mutually  related  self- 
active  l>eings.  Thia  rAated  Helf-nctivit y  is  the  ultinuitt'  ami  the 
forever  inexpllr.ahU,  fact.  It  is  mysterious  an»l  inexplicable, 
not  IxH-ause  it  contr.idicts  other  facts,  which  arc,  like  it,  Ixused 
upon  exi)erience  ;  nor  yet  because   it  is  essentially  antinomic 

»  See  tlio  ilisoussion  in  tho  Chapter  on  MdhiI  Freedom  in  the  author's  Phi- 
losophy of  Conduct. 


350  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

and  self-contradictory.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  the  ultimate  fact 
on  which,  as  fact,  science  builds  itself  up ;  as  does  also  all 
ordinary  and  practical  knowledge.  It  is  mysterious,  because  it 
is  ultimate  fact ;  and  as  fact,  it  is  the  basis  of  all  knowledge. 
Things,  that  are  "  inere  things,"  are  supposed  to  be  neither 
conscious  of  tlieir  self-activity,  nor  of  their  relations  in  fact 
to  other  things  ;  nor  of  the  reasons  why  they  should  act  as 
they  do,  or  why  they  should  act  at  all.  Mere  things  cannot, 
therefore,  choose  to  act  this  way  rather  than  some  other ;  they 
cannot  see  why  they  should,  or  will  that  they  should,  act  in 
any  way  at  all.  But  it  is  distinctive  of  selves  that  they  do  see, 
to  some  extent  at  least,  why  they  act ;  they  do,  at  least  some- 
times, very  deliberately  choose  how  they  will  act.  More  es- 
pecially it  is  distinctive  of  selves,  in  the  higher  stages  of  per- 
sonal life,  that  certain  ethical,  sesthetical,  and  religious  ideals 
arise  in  their  field  of  consciousness  ;  and  that  they  may  choose 
either  to  pursue,  or  to  refuse  to  pursue,  these  ideals.  It  is  in 
this  field  of  rational  apprehension,  of  choice,  and  of  practical 
activities,  that  the  highest  attainments  of  moral  freedom  lie. 

That  men  may  choose,  and  may  be  influenced  to  choose,  and 
may  influence  others  to  choose,  the  life  whose  ideal  is  a  moral 
and  spiritual  union  with  God,  is  an  undoubted  fact  of  religious 
experience.  The  modus  operandi  of  this  choice,  and  of  the 
relations  between  God's  w^ill  and  man's  will  which  the  choice 
implies,  may  have  the  insolvable  mystery  of  ultimate  facts  of 
relation  between  self-active  wills.  But  tliis  is  quite  a  different 
thing  from  saying  that  the  relation  in  fact  is,  from  the  rational 
point  of  view,  antinomic  and  self-contradictory. 

The  claim,  therefore,  that  the  absoluteness  of  the  Divine 
Will  necessarily  excludes  all  finite  wills  from  any  manner,  or 
measure,  of  moral  freedom  is  based  upon  a  complete  misappre- 
hension of  the  fundamental  nature  of  the  relation  between 
wills.  This  is  as  true,  when  the  misapprehension  affects  the 
religious  conception  of  God,  as  it  is  when  the  same  misappre- 
hension results  in  the  dogmatic  or  agnostic  denial  of  the  Being 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE   351 

of  God.  The  theology  of  Islam  and  even  of  Christianity  has 
wrought  as  much  mischief  here  as  atheism  has.  A  God 
whose  infinite  and  absolute  sovereignty  is  so  conceived  of  as 
to  reduce  to  nothingness  the  personal  being  of  man,  can  no 
more  be  made  tolerable  to  reason  as  a  moral  Ruler  tlian  can  a 
self-explanatory,  self-contained  and  self-developing  mechan- 
ism. To  purchase  the  omnipotence  and  omniscience  of  Deity 
at  the  expense  of  his  wisdom,  and  of  the  moral  attriljutes  of 
justice  and  love,  is  the  worst  sort  of  a  bargain  which  religion 
can  possibly  make. 

Moreover,  to  deny  the  possibility  of  full  personal  rela- 
tionship between  God  and  man — in  which  God's  holy  Will  is 
absolute,  and  man's  dependent  but  limited  personal  freedom  is 
actual  and  effective — is  really  to  deny  the  divine  omnipotence. 
Speaking  anthropomorphically,  one  may  safely  declare  that  the 
Divine  Wisdom  can  find  a  way,  if  the  Divine  Being  wills  it,  to 
have  its  own  Will  perfectly,  and  at  tlie  same  time  to  let  other 
beings  have  so  much  of  their  wills  as  it  seems  wise  and  good 
for  them  to  have.  Beyond  this,  the  religious  conception  of 
God  as  Moral  Ruler  requires  no  postulates  with  regard  either 
to  tlie  absoluteness  of  the  Divine  Will,  or  to  the  indepen- 
dent and  free  wills  of  the  subjects  of  his  rule.  But  to  im- 
agine that  this  conception  impairs  the  foreknowledge  of  God, 
or  jeopards  the  fulfilment  of  his  purposes,  is  to  conceive  of 
omniscience  as  a  species  of  uncertain  calculation,  and  of  the 
development  of  God's  Kingdom  as  a  comi)lex  of  incidental  and 
chance  occurrences. 

When  human  reason,  under  the  compulsions  of  its  inherent 
demand  the  better  to  undei'stand  the  Bfing  of  the  World, 
and  through  the  enticenu'nLs  and  needs  of  th<'  higher  ajstheti- 
cal,  etliical,  and  religious  sentiments,  has  once  fniined  tlie  con- 
ct'ption  of  (fod  as  p»'rfect  Ktliical  Spirit,  then  the  inherent, 
rational  necessity  for  conceiving  of  the  history  of  humanity  ivs 
under  the  divine  moral  ruh«  U'conics  obvious.  In  no  other 
way  tlian  as  the  Creator,  Tpholder,  and  Distrilnitor  of  the  des- 


352  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

tiny  of  personal  beings  in  the  furtherance  of  ethical  ideals  can 
the  perfection  of  ethical  spirit  exist,  or  maintain,  or  express 
itself.  An  ethical  spirit  is  essentially  a  social  spirit.  Were 
there  no  other  selves  in  his  universe,  then  the  Absolute  Self 
could  not  be  perfect  Ethical  Spirit. 

It  is  scarcely  needful  again  in  this  connection,  however,  to 
revive  the  answer  to  the  antiquated  and  worn-out  objection, 
tliat  such  a  view  makes  God  dependent  upon  others  for  his  being 
what  he  really  is.  For  the  answer  to  the  objection,  whenever 
made,  must  be  always  the  same.  The  Absolute  that  God  is, 
is  not  the  Unrelated,  but  the  Ground  of  all  relations.  The  com- 
pulsion to  be  the  Father  of  spirits  has  its  source  in  the  Father- 
hood of  God  Himself;  just  as  the  necessity  to  redeem  and  to 
develop  spiritually  his  many  sons,  springs  from  the  exhaustless 
fountain  of  the  Divine  Love. 

Man's  personality,  then,  with  all  the  so-called  freedom  of  will 
which  it  implies,  is  to  be  considered  from  the  point  of  view  of  re- 
ligion as  the  gift  of  God.  This  gift  God  can  make,  because  he 
is  omnipotent ;  this  gift  he  has  made,  in  the  way  in  which  his  om- 
niscience provides,  and  which  is  illustrated  by  all  our  experience 
of  personal  relations.  Its  profounder  "mode  of  operation" 
lies  hidden  from  human  sight.  But  the  rational  ?7zo^//' and  final 
purpose  of  all  that  Divine  governance,  under  whose  control  the 
evolution  of  humanity  takes  place,  must  be  found  in  that  per- 
fection of  Spirit  which  God  is. 

Such  a  view  of  God  as  Moral  Ruler  is  certainly  most  con- 
sonant with  the  beliefs  and  sentiments  of  the  highest  religious 
experience.  And  if  psychology  and  metaphysics  would  only 
cease  from  trying  to  show  that,  much  which  really  is,  cannot 
possibly  be;  and  how  things  are  not,  as  they  really  are;  or 
how  they  are,  as  they  really  are  not ;  then  this  view  would 
seem  to  science  and  philosophy,  if  not  without  its  mysteries, 
at  least  as  rational  as  any  other  view.  And,  indeed,  the  reli- 
gious is  the  more  rational  of  the  several  views  proposed.  The 
guardianship  of  the  ethical  interests  concerned  in  the  answer 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE   353 

to  the  problem  of  the  quasi-moval  relations  between  man  and 
the  Being  of  the  World,  both  a  scientific  materialism  and  a 
mystical  pantheism  seem  incompetent  to  secure.  To  quote 
what  has  been  said  in  other  connections  :  ^  "  The  attempt  to  con- 
strue the  World-Ground  in  a  so-called  scientific  and  totally  im- 
personal way  tends  always  to  minimize  the  authority  and  value 
of  persomd  life.  A  bubble  rising,  briefly  remaining,  and  then 
soon  bursting  upon  the  surface  of  Nature's  boundless  sea,  seems 
scarcely  worth  the  attention  which  the  study  of  the  Moral 
Self  of  man,  and  of  his  rising  moral  Ideals  urges  us  to  bestow. 
But  a  single  child  of  God  may  surely  be  held  to  have  no  small 
potential  value.  And  to  believe  that  what  is  done  for  one 
— whether  tliat  be  one's  self  or  some  other  one — is  somehow 
done  for  all,  and  that  the  Ethical  Spirit  in  whom  all  have  their 
life  and  being  is  the  Source  and  Guarantor  of  the  moral  inter- 
ests of  all,  can  scarcely  fail  to  assist  in  both  the  theoretical 
and  the  practical  solution  of  the  antithesis  between  the  ego- 
istic and  altruistic  virtues  so  called." 

If,  however,  the  search  for  philosophy's  answer  to  this  prob- 
lem is  turned  in  another  direction,  it  appears  that  "  the  oneness 
of  man  in  God  "  has  not  infrequently  been  so  taught  by  the 
metapliysics  of  ethics  as  to  do  away  with  all  intelligible  ap- 
prehension of  the  nature  and  grounds  of  morality  itself.  I  am 
07ie  person, — in  my  moral  Selfhood  exclusive  of  all  other  per- 
sonality and  individually  responsible  in  a  very  real  and  signifi- 
cant way.  31^  morality  is  my  own ;  there  is  no  reality  an- 
swering to  the  term  the  "Social  Self,"  but  the  morality  of  eacli 
Moral  Self  is  ever  an  individual  and  concrete  affair.  The  moral 
self  of  every  liuman  Inking  is,  indeed,  peculiarly  lonely.  A 
metiipliysics  of  ethics,  winch  either  alienates  the  attribution  of 
good  and  bud  conduct  to  the  individual,  or  which  merges  it  all 
together  in  the  Universal  Person,  is  above  all  forms  of  the  solu- 
tion of  this  problem  most  to  be  avoided  and  dreaded.  Such  a 
method  of  reconciling  moral  antitheses  cuts  morality  up  by  the 

*  See  the  author's  Philosophy  of  Conduct,  p.  633/. 

23 


354  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

very  roots.  It  breaks  the  force  of  the  practical  maxim : 
"  Stand  up,  and  take  your  full  share  of  the  blame  for  the 
world's  evil,  like  a  man.*' 

None  the  less,  however,  it  is  necessary  to  emphasize  the  so- 
cial nature  of  morality,  and  the  amelioration  which  all  moral 
conflicts  receive  from  tlie  religious  doctrine  of  the  Fatherhood 
of  God,  and  of  the  membership  of  all  men  in  the  one  divine 
family.  All  finite  spirits  derive  their  being  from  One  Ethical 
Spirit ;  the  sons  of  men  are  also  sons  of  God.  From  this  point 
of  view,  the  hard  and  sharp  antithesis  between  the  so-called 
egoistic  and  the  so-called  altruistic  duties  softens  and  seems  to 
melt  away.  If  any  one  Self  in  its  conduct,  strives  to  conserve 
and  promote  the  moral  interests  of  its  better  Self ;  then  this  is 
done  by  it,  as  one  of  the  members  of  the  divine  family  and  with 
their  interests  as  truly  as  its  own,  at  heart.  In  all  such  de- 
votion to  others — to  consider  the  individual's  conduct  from  the 
other  and  reverse  point  of  view — the  Self  is  realizing  its  own 
ideal  of  the  morally  most  worthy  Self.  Thus  the  "  suffusion 
of  vague  personality  "  which  everywhere  appears  in  the  study 
of  ethical  phenomena  is  made  to  crystallize  into  a  definite  doc- 
trine of  a  personal  Ground  for  all  these  phenomena.  The  dis- 
tinction between  persons  (whether  human  or  divine)  is  not 
abrogated ;  the  rather  is  it  emphasized  and  elevated. 

In  the  light  of  this  anticipatory  survey  of  objections,  which 
is  borrowed  from  the  metaphysics  of  ethics,  reference  to  the 
nature  of  the  historical  development  of  the  belief  of  man  in 
the  divine  moral  government  becomes  more  suggestive  and 
even  convincing.  In  defining  the  nature  of  religion  it  was 
seen^  that,  even  when  taken  at  its  lowest  terms,  it  embraces 
the  belief  in  some  sort  of  a  rule  of  the  invisible  spiritual  powers, 
or  the  gods,  over  human  affairs.  The  conception  of  sin,  or  of 
wrongdoing  as  contrary  to  the  will  of  the  gods,  is,  of  coui'se, 
an  adjunct  to  the  development  of  the  conception  of  their  moral 
rule.     Thus  *'  in  Tahiti  sickness  was  the  occasion  for  making 

1  Compare  Vol.  I,  pp.  455^. 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE        355 

reparation  for  past  sins,  e,  g.^  by  restoring  stolen  property."  ^ 
In  Peru,  in  the  time  of  the  Incas,  "  when  any  general  calam- 
ity occurred,  the  members  of  the  community  were  rigor- 
ously examined,  until  the  sinner  was  discovered  and  compelled 
to  make  reparation."  Hence  among  the  "more  advanced 
races,"  in  addition  to  various  means  of  exorcism,  *'a  method 
of  aiding  in  the  cure  of  disease  was  found  in  the  confession  of 
sins.    ^ 

It  is  true  that  we  may  direct  attention,  as  Tiele  has  done,^ 
to  a  later  difference  arising  between  the  "  theanthropic '*  and 
the  "  theocratic  "  religions  so-called.  But  this  author  himself 
explains  :  ^  *'  We  therefore  only  mean  that  one  of  the  two  fami- 
lies (Aryan  and  Semitic)  develops  more  in  the  theocratic,  the 
other  in  the  theanthropic  direction."  Even  with  this  explana- 
tion the  difference  is  not  so  great  as  it  at  first  sight  appears ; 
for  with  those  peoples  who  dwell  most  upon  the  theocratic 
side,  the  conception  of  fatherhood,  and  of  allied  domestic  re- 
lations, is  bound  up  with  the  conception  of  God  as  sovereign, 
kincf,  or  ruler  under  some  other  kindred  term.  The  kingf  is 
also,  in  some  sort,  the  father  of  his  subjects.  On  the  other 
hand,  even  in  the  title  of  Father  and  ^lother  as  applied  to 
Deity  by  the  Rig  Veda,  or  by  the  Avesta  (where  Ahura- 
Miizda  is  frequently  called  *'  Father"),  or  by  the  Greeks  and 
Romans,  the  idea  of  control  and  rulership  is  always  included. 
Indeed,  the  conception  of  patria  pofestas  as  held  by  the  entire 
ancient  world  emphasized  the  authority  of  paternal  government 
in  the  family.  In  a  word,  in  all  these  religions  tlie  theocratic 
idea,  or  the  assumption  that  the  gods  have  to  do  with  the  con- 
trol of  human  affairs,  seems  present,  although  in  varying  de- 
grees. Even  in  tliose  cases  where  the  invisible  powere  are 
thought  of  as  existent,  but  not  as  meddling   with  mundane 

*  See  Waitz  and  Gerland,  Anthropolojijie  dor  Xaturvolkor,  VI,  p.  396. 
'  Compare  Dorman,  Origin  of  Primitive  Superstitions,  p.   'uf. 
3  Elements  of  the  Science  of  Religion,  First  Series,  Lecture  VI. 
« Ibid.,  p.  136. 


356  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

matters,  they  still  rule,  as  it  were,  by  proxy,  or  through  the 
order  which  they  have  previously  established. 

This  conception  of  a  theocratic  government  of  human  af- 
fairs, like  every  other  conception  of  ethics  and  of  religion, 
grows  from  crude  beginnings  to  higher  degrees  of  purity  and 
of  influence  over  conduct.  This  is  even  true  of  those  develop- 
ments which  are  more  likely — as,  for  example,  the  ethico-reli- 
gious  ideas  and  ideals  of  the  Greeks — to  be  classed  as  distinctly 
"  theanthropic."  Indeed,  the  Greek  conceptions  of  Moira  or 
Fate,  and  Anangke  or  Necessity,  vacillate  in  their  meaning ; — 
sometimes  being  equivalent  to  what  the  gods  have  themselves 
decreed,  sometimes  being  represented  as  a  sort  of  impersonal 
Power  superior  to  the  gods  themselves.  On  the  other  hand, 
again,  the  man-like  divinities  either  preside  over  human  beings, 
in  the  person  of  some  deified  man  who  is  for  the  time  being 
the  appointed  ruler  of  the  people  ;  or  else  some  one  god,  as  is 
fitting  in  matters  of  government,  holds  the  supreme  control ; 
or,  again,  as  in  the  Homeric  period,  the  gods  have  a  sort  of 
confederated  government  and  rule  by  council  with  one  another, 
or  by  intriguing  against  one  another,  after  the  fashion  of  an 
Oriental  court,  or  of  the  gathering  of  the  clans  in  some  Occi- 
dental country. 

Indeed,  among  the  Greeks,  the  very  idea  of  moral  order  and 
government,  in  its  more  rational  and  absolute  form,  developed 
only  in  a  pretty  constant  relation  to  religious  ideas.  All 
things  were,  it  is  true,  early  conceived  of  as  coming  under  the 
ordering  power  of  "number; "  in  this  way  they  were  invested 
with  a  sort  of  rational  necessity.^  All  things  happened  as  they 
were  allotted  to  men  by  destiny  ;  the  gods  themselves  had  their 
positions  assigned  to  them ;  the  dark  impersonal  shadow  of 
necessitated  Fate  hung  over  the  throne  of  Zeus  himself.  But 
even  this  impersonal  rule  contained  the  factors  of  an  assured 
and  perfect  world-order ;  and  essentially  considered,  it  resembled 
the  ideal  of  a  rationally  ordained  Law  rather  than  a  blind 
1  Compare  Plutarch,  De  Plac.  Phil.,  I,  25-28. 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE       357 

and  irrational  Fate.  For  the  World  was  also  conceived  of  as 
a  social  whole  ;  and  in  it  there  were  gods  and  men,  both  truly 
personal, — the  former  as  rulers  and  the  latter  as  citizens  and 
subjects.  According  to  Epictetus,  for  example,  Zeus,  who 
was  somehow  bound  so  that  he  could  not  make  the  body  or 
the  possessions  of  Epictetus  to  be  as  they  would  have  been,  had 
Zeus  been  unhindered,  nevertheless  had  given  to  the  philoso- 
pher a  sliare  in  his  Divine  Self.  This  share  consisted  in  "  the 
power  of  making  or  not  making  effort,  the  power  of  indulging 
or  not  indulging  desire ;  in  short,  the  power  of  dealing  with 
all  the  ideas  of  the  mind."  In  a  word :  God  must  not  be  con- 
ceived of  as  the  source  of  disorder  or  as  setting  aside  the  ra- 
tional system  of  things ;  and  yet  he  has  given  to  man  that  best 
gift  of  free  and  rational  being,  in  order  that  man,  being  like 
God,  niiglit  prefer  the  same  supreme  good  which  God  himself 
prefers.  Thus  the  Stoic  philosopher  nearly,  but  not  quite, 
caught  tlie  Christian  idea  of  the  divine  moral  rule  over 
mankhid. 

In  the  most  theocratic  of  the  monotheistic  religions,  and  in 
the  religions  which  arise  under  monarchical  conditions,  even 
before  they  become  distinctly  monotheistic.  Deity  is  regarded 
as  a  sovereign  whose  judgment  cannot  be  questioned  and  whose 
will  must  be  unhesitatingly  obeyed.  Human  conduct  must,  on 
account  of  the  essential  relations  existing  between  the  Divine 
Pei*son  and  finite  persons,  be  regulated  according  to  divine 
ideas  of  right  and  wrong.  And  it  is  well  for  man  to  have  it 
actually  so.  For  Deity,  like  any  earthly  sovereign,  does  not 
brook  resistance  to  its  rule.  Thus,  in  the  conception  of  the 
most  ancient  Chinese  religious  doctrine,  the  sovereignty  of 
Heaven  under  tlio  title  of  Shang-Ti,  or  Supreme  Lord,  liowever 
impei"sonally  conceived  of  in  otlier  respects,  enforces  a  strict 
moral  government  over  liuman  affairs.  Lideed,  so  fundamental 
and  so  thoroughly  inwrought  into  the  entire  political  and  social 
structure  of  China  is  this  doctrine  of  tlie  ethical  rule  of  Heaven, 
that  nothing  concerning  the  iiistory  of  the  people  in  the  pastor 


358  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

their  better  thoughts  in  the  present,  can  be  understood  without 
taking  it  into  the  account.  In  the  ancient  Babylonian  and 
Syrian  religions,  too,  the  sovereign  rule  of  God  is  made  prom- 
inent. In  the  hymns  of  Babylonia^  Deity  is  addressed  as 
"Father  Xannar "  (or  "Illuminator"),  as  "powerful  One," 
"merciful  One,"  "Ruler  of  the  Land,"  etc.;  over  and  over 
again  is  reference  made  to  his  "  strong  command  ;  "  and  it  is 
declared,  "  Lord,  in  heaven  is  thy  sovereignty,  on  earth  is  thy 
sovereignty."  The  extreme  of  this  type  of  conception  of  the 
divine  government  is  reached  in  Islam,  where,  although  the 
thought  of  the  essential  good  of  a  moral  and  spiritual  likeness 
to  the  perfection  of  God  as  Ethical  Spirit  is  not  wholly  dis- 
regarded, submission  to  the  fateful  and  all-powerful  will  of 
Allah  is  made  the  essence  of  all  religion.  "  Thus  Allah  wills," 
becomes  the  sufficient  reason  for  all  occurrences,  the  sufficient 
excuse  for  all  failures  and  lapses.  This  irresistible  Will  of 
Allah  rules  autocratically ;  and  Muhammadan  literature 
abounds  with  both  serious  and  facetious  illustrations  of  what 
comes  to  those  mortals  who  try  to  do  things,  whether  Allah 
will,  or  no. 

We  have  already  had  frequent  occasion  to  note  tlie  changes 
in  the  moral  and  social  ideas  and  practices  of  any  people,  which 
logically  and  necessarily  accompany  the  growing  conviction 
that  the  gods  are  good  and  righteous ;  and  which  culminate 
in  the  belief  that  Deity  is  perfect  Moral  Reason,  and  is  there- 
fore worthy  to  set  the  ideal  standard  of  morality  for  men.  In 
this  Ideal  of  a  rational  and  ethical  Spirit,  the  longings  of  man- 
kind to  believe  in  Providence  and  the  sinking  of  soul  toward 
despair  before  the  conception  of  Destiny,  are  peacefully  rec- 
onciled. God  now  becomes  the  source,  the  pattern  and  the 
guardian  of  righteousness.  His  Will  is  now  conceived  of, 
not  wholly,  or  even  chiefly,  as  omnipotent  and  omniscient,  but 
as  good  and  gracious  Will.    The  so-called  moral  law  loses  its  im- 

1  See,  for  example,  the  Hymn  to  Sin,  as  given  in  Jastrow,  Religion  of  Baby 
Ionia  and  Assyria,  p.  303/. 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULP:R  AND  PROVIDENCE         359 

personal  cliaracter.  The  awareness  of  leaving  somehow  gone 
wrong,  Ijecomes  the  consciousness  of  sin ;  and  this  begets  a 
feeling  of  separation  in  spirit  and  ideals  from  that  One  Self  in 
moral  likeness  to  whom,  and  in  vital  spiritual  union  with  whom, 
all  man's  highest  good  must  forever  consist. 

This  conception  of  God  as  moral  ruler  it  is  which  the  reli- 
gion of  Christ  sustains  ;  althougli  the  current  Christianity  has 
only  very  imperfectly  conserved  it,  and  still  largely  and  crimi- 
nally neglects  the  endeavor  to  realize  it  for  the  regulation  of 
human  affairs.  By  common  consent  it  is  to  Judaism,  among 
all  the  ancient  religions,  that  the  great  distinction  must  be  ac- 
corded of  having  most  highly  developed  the  conception  of  the 
divine  rule  in  righteousness.  The  few  pious  ones  of  this  won- 
derful people,  in  spite  of  all  the  temptations  to  distrust  which 
come  from  seeing  the  prosperity  of  wickedness  and  the  distress 
and  temporary  discomfiture  of  goodness,  still  clung  to  the  per- 
suasion that  the  rule  of  Yahweh  followed  an  eternally  un- 
changeable and  supremely  worthy  end.  The  reasons  why  the 
divine  purpose  failed  of  a  fuller  and  more  nearly  perfect  reali- 
zation were  to  be  found  in  the  unfaithfulness  of  man.  In  feel- 
ing the  responsibility  for  this  failure  it  was  then,  as  it  ever  has 
been,  not  the  careless  but  the  most  pious  souls  which  took 
upon  themselves  their  more  than  full  share.  To  tlie  piercing 
questions  :  "  xVrt  thou  He  who  hast  created  all  things  ?  "  "Art 
thou  the  Almighty  who  governest  all  things  and  rulest  over 
all  things?"  their  faith  could  give  only  an  affirmative  reply. 
And  when  the  facts  seem  more  than  usually  contradictory  of 
this  reply,  their  confession  Ls  made  with  bowed  heads  :  "  Hc- 
liold  I  am  vile,  wliat  shall  I  answer  Thee?  T  will  lay  my  hand 
u{)on  my  mouth." 

Tlie  failh  in  the  perfection  of  the  Divine  rult»,  and  in  the 
final  triumph  of  righteousness,  which  is  necessarily  so  faint  and 
vacillating  wlien  based  upon  pnrrli/  empirical  considerations, 
becomes  a  steadfiust  conviction  when  the  hiLchest  notes  of  reli- 
gious  experience  are  soundt'(l  in  the  s«)ul.     Fur  God  as   Provi- 


360  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

dence  is  *'  the  hope  of  courage,  not  the  pretext  of  cowardice." 
This  view  which  the  Emperor  Augustus  tried  to  revive,  as 
having  been  the  inspiration  and  guide  of  the  early  Romans,  is 
embodied  in  Vergil's  ^neid ; — how  the  race,  "  which  from 
burned  Ilium  came  forth  brave,"  formed  Rome  in  reliance  on 
Jove,  and  by  doing,  in  virtuous  deeds,  as  the  gods  would  have 
them,  made  Rome  great  and  strong.  But  it  is  the  religion  of 
Christ,  above  all  others,  that  incites,  illumines,  and  confirms 
the  doctrine  which  Zoroastrianism  made  an  essential  part  of 
its  beliefs,  and  which  the  best  of  ancient  Israel  struggled  so 
nobly  to  maintain. 

How  the  central  and  essential  truths  of  Christianity  empha- 
sized the  conception  of  God  as  the  Father  and  Ruler  of  man- 
kind because  He  was  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  in  and  over  the 
world  of  things  and  men ;  and  how  the  moral  code  of  Chris- 
tianity springs  directly  from  the  inspiring  command  to  every 
follower  of  Clirist  that  he  shall  realize  in  his  own  life  and  de- 
velopment this  same  Spirit  which  was  so  perfectly  manifested 
in  "  the  Master;  " — this  has  already  been  explained  with  suffi- 
cient detail.  It  is,  therefore,  only  necessary  in  this  connection 
to  remind  ourselves  tliat  the  picture  thus  presented  of  the  di- 
vine ethical  relations  to  the  affairs  of  humanity  is  not  tliat  of  an 
autocratic  sovereign,  after  the  pattern  of  the  Oriental  absolute 
monarchy,  but  the  rather  that  of  an  immanent,  inspiring,  and 
redeeming  Spiritual  Life.  God  is  in  the  World,  the  indwell- 
ing and  controlling  Power  which  is  shaping  human  history 
toward  the  progressive  realization  of  ethical  ideals. 

If,  then,  the  question  is  raised,  as  to  the  Divine  Method, — 
meaning  now,  not  the  occult  and  mysterious  modus  operandi  of 
Absolute  Will,  in  ethical  relations  with  finite  wills,  but  the 
means,  experientially  known,  by  which  this  process  of  govern- 
ment is  conducted  ;  certain  answers  at  once  suggest  themselves 
as  obviously  appropriate.  How  does  God  govern  the  world  of 
men  ?  His  government  is  in  and  through  all  the  controlling 
forces  and  influences,  visible  and  invisible,  so-called  "  natural  " 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE       361 

and  more  manifestly  spiritual,  which  constitute  the  changing 
and  evolving  environment  of  man.  The  more  detailed  an- 
swer belongs  to  experience,  in  the  form  of  the  positive  sciences. 

And,  first,  what  is  called  "  nature  "  (in  the  narrower  mean- 
ing of  the  word)  is  a  most  fundamental  and  important  spliere 
of  the  divine  government  over  tlie  human  race.  God  is  the 
Moral  Ruler  of  mankind,  in  and  through  the  evolution  of  their 
physical  environment.  It  has  been  quite  too  common  on  the 
part  of  apologists  and  theologians,  to  depreciate  the  moral  in- 
fluences that  can  be  brought  to  bear  upon  man  only  through 
this  physical  environment.  Even  the  most  serious  and  un- 
prejudiced attempts  at  a  philosophy  of  religion  frequently  need 
to  be  reminded  that  argument  cannot  play  fast  and  loose  with 
the  cosmic  existences  and  processes.  If  God  is  surely  revealed 
at  all  to  the  human  mhid  and  the  human  heart  by  this  system 
of  things  in  tlie  midst  of  which  man's  life  is  set,  tlien  the  rev- 
elation must  be  received  by  the  mind  and  laid  upon  the  heart, 
as  it  in  fact  and  actually  is.  Having  once  appealed  to 
Csesar,  to  Csesar  we  must  go.  If  the  goodness  and  wisdom  of 
God  are  shown  in  those  so-called  "  benevolent  "  contrivances 
which  are  more  easily  recognized  and  appreciated  as  the 
primary  conditions  of  sentient  life  and  happy  experiences; 
then  the  same  goodness  and  wisdom  must  be  trusted  as  afford- 
ing to  faith  the  rational  explanation  of  the  abundant  provision 
made  for  pain,  disappointment,  and  death.  Tliese  latter  con- 
trivances too,  in  their  deeper  and  more  mysterious  meaning, 
must  somehow  be  benevolent.  If  Nature  evinces  the  goodness 
and  wisdom  of  God  as  the  Creator,  the  same  Nature  evinces 
the  goodness  and  wisdom  of  tlie  same  God  as  the  Destroyer. 

Tliat  the  system  of  things  whicli  constitutes  man's  close-fitting 
inescapable  environment  has  a  moral  purpose  to  serve  is,  in- 
deed, a  trutli,  or  a  postulate  which  cannot  be  derived  from  an}' 
objective  or  purely  scientific  study  of  natural  phenomena. 
Natural  science  so-called,  properly  tiikes  the  point  of  view 
which  regards  these  phenomena  as  a-moral.     From  the  point 


362  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

of  view  suggested  by  the  most  advanced  moral  ideals,  there  is 
undoubtedly  much  in  nature,  especially  at  first  sight  and  on 
the  surface,  which  appears  horribly  immoral ;  many  of  its 
transactions  do  seem  to  be  the  expression  of  selfishness,  cruelty, 
and  lust.  Ethics  cannot  account  for,  much  less  justify,  man's 
developed  ethical  opinions  and  the  sanctions  which  he  attaches 
to  his  ethical  ideals,  by  appeals  to  the  behavior  of  things  or  of 
tlie  lower  animals.  But,  whether  by  processes  of  evolution 
that  lie  far  back  in  the  obscure  and  hypothetical  realm  of  the 
prehistoric  and  the  prehuman,  or  by  some  divinely  imparted 
impulse  that  has  resulted  in  a  "  leap  "  from  the  merely  natural 
to  a  share  in  the  supernatural,  man  is,  in  fact,  raised  above  the 
need  of  an  appeal  to  nature  by  way  of  imitation  and  example. 
He  is  also  forbidden  the  right  to  make  this  appeal.  To  be  hu- 
man one  must  be  more  than  "  natural,"  in  the  lower  meaning  of 
this  word.  The  natural  is  the  not-moral,  if  not  the  immoral ; 
and  human  beings  cannot  indulge  in  the  silly  selfishness  of 
bovine  creatures,  or  the  cruelty  of  tigers  and  hyenas,  or  the 
lust  of  dogs  and  monkeys,  without  a  really  unnatural  dehuman- 
izing of  themselves.  This  reaction  of  the  higher  nature 
from  the  "  will  to  live  "  as  the  lower  nature  unwittingly  be- 
haves herself,  leads  to  an  irrational  denunciation  and  abhorrence 
of  those  as  yet  undeveloped  and  less  than  half  self-like  beings 
which  constitute  so  large  a  portion  of  the  environment  of  hu- 
manity. Thus,  in  fact,  the  outspeaking  of  religious  experience, 
and  the  reflections  of  theology,  have  quite  too  often  looked 
upon  so-called  Nature  as  essentially  antithetic  and  even  vio- 
lently opposed  to  the  true  moral  and  religious  life.  The  liter- 
ature of  religion  abounds  in  hard  words  spoken  against  man's 
physical  constitution  and  physical  environment,  as  though  these 
things  were  essentially  the  "  devil's  own,"  and  not  like  ourselves, 
a  vast  assemblage  of  God's  creatures  and  children,  of  a  lower 
scale  of  reality  than  that  which  has  graciously  been  bestowed 
upon  us. 

There  is,  however,  no  more  startling  fact  in  human  ethical 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE        363 

experience  than  the  way  in  which  even  those  who  avowedly 
assume  the  "  purely  "  scientific  attitude  toward  the  cosmic 
forces  and  processes,  feel  themselves  impelled  to  confess  their 
deeper  faith  in  the  moral  World-order.  As  long  as  this  atti- 
tude is  kept  strictly  pure,  neither  praise  nor  blame,  neither  the 
admiration  which  approaches  reverence  nor  the  denunciation 
which,  when  extreme,  savors  of  blasphemy,  becomes  man's 
judgment  as  to  the  Being  of  the  World.  But  when  one's 
'*  luck  "  goes  wrong,  or  ''  fate  "  seems  not  only  unkind  but 
positively  malignant,  the  tendency  to  an  irrational  feeling  of 
resentment,  or  to  whispered,  if  not  outbreaking,  curses  is  as 
strong  in  the  scientific  atheist,  or  agnostic,  as  in  the  devil- 
worshipper.  When  he  is  good-natured  and  successful,  how- 
ever, nobody  likes  to  hear  the  Being  of  the  World  abused.  How 
fair  and  admirable,  and  bent  on  securing  in  the  long  run  some 
higher  good,  does  the  Cosmos  usually  appear  to  the  scientific 
devotee  !  The  railing  accusation,  brought  against  It  (^si(f)  in 
the  name  of  science  by  a  recent  writer,^  who  speaks  of  the  di- 
vine dealing's  as  *'  the  hand  which  is  red  with  millions  of 
years  of  murder  ;  "  of  Providence  as  *'  a  scatter-brained,  semi- 
powerful,  semi-impotent  monster  ;  "  and  of  the  thunder  and  the 
whirlwind  as  suggestive  of  some  "  blackguardly  larrikin  kick- 
ing his  heels  in  the  clouds," — is  almost  as  shocking  and  repul- 
sive from  the  point  of  view  of  Haeckel  and  Huxley,  as  it  would 
have  been  from  that  of  Paul  or  Augustine.  But  if  this  innate 
spirit  of  piety  does  not  express  the  scientific  confirmation  of  the 
instinctive  attitude  of  ivligion  toward  the  mystery  of  man's 
physical  environment ;  What,  pray  !  in  the  name  of  rationality, 
does  it  express?  Man  may  not,  without  condign  punishment, 
not  only  from  his  own  religious  and  moral  nature,  but  also 
from  those  {)iecious  festhetical  and  (^j^^sZ-ethical  sentiments  and 
ideals  whicli  are  inseparable  from  science  itself,  abuse  or  oppro 
briously  treat  Nature, — however  conceived  of,  or  regarded  from 
whatever  point  of  view.     The  cosmic  forces  and  processes  do, 

1  Sec  Mallock,  Religion  aa  a  Credible  Doctrine,  p.  174/. 


S64  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

indeed,  deserve  tlie  better  treatment.  If  there  is  anything 
which  the  modern  doctrine  of  evolution  tends  to  establish  as 
an  essential  truth,  it  is  just  this  :  The  losses  are  somehow — 
although  mysteriously — compensated  by  the  higher  gains ;  the 
reign  of  death  is  the  advancing  kingdom  of  life  ;  the  passing 
of  the  generations  of  men  is  the  uplift  of  the  race.  To  return 
to  the  language  of  religion :  "  The  earnest  expectation  of  the 
creation  waiteth  for  the  revealing  of  the  sons  of  God.  For  the 
creation  was  subjected  to  vanity,  not  of  its  own  will,  but  by 
reason  of  him  who  subjected  it,  in  hope  that  the  creation  itself 
also  shall  be  delivered  from  the  bondage  of  corruption  into 
the  liberty  of  the  glory  of  the  children  of  God.  For  we  know 
that  the  whole  creation  groaneth  and  travaileth  in  pain  to- 
gether until  now.  And  not  only  so,  but  ourselves  also,  who 
have  the  first-fruits  of  the  Spirit,  even  we  ourselves  groan 
within  ourselves,  waiting  for  our  adoption,  to  wit,  the  redemp- 
tion of  our  body"  (Rom.  viii,  19-23). 

It  is  true  that  the  conception  of  the  cosmic  processes  which 
is  properly  gained  by  the  physical  sciences  is  not,  primarily  con- 
sidered, that  of  the  rule  of  a  perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  But  as 
our  acquaintance  with  Nature  becomes  more  profound,  and  our 
insight  the  keener,  and  especially  as  we  take  to  our  confidence 
the  beneficent  and  hopeful  side  of  evolution,  our  views  un- 
dergo important  modifications.  Undoubtedly,  these  modifica- 
tions are  largely  due  to  the  habit  of  reading  into  natural  phe- 
nomena man's  better  Self — ethically,  just  as  truly  as  eestheti- 
cally.  And  perhaps  the  system  of  things  would  have  to  be 
pronounced  largely  a-moral,  in  itself,  or  conducive  to  immoral- 
ity in  the  human  species,  if  the  investigation  could  be  conducted 
j)urAy  from  the  scientific  point  of  view.  But  it  cannot  be  so 
conducted  ;  for  the  fundamental  fact  remains  that  science  itself 
cannot  escape  admitting  sesthetical  and  ethical  considerations 
and  ideals  into  its  conclusions  from  its  own  points  of  view. 
And  when  these  sesthetical  and  ethical  points  of  view  are  once 
assumed,  and  consistently  occupied,  the  truth  becomes  clearer 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE         365 

that  much  of  the  most  essential  moral  culture  comes  to  the 
race  perpetually,  in  the  way  of  God's  rule  in  and  through 
man's  physical  environment. 

In  this  connection  a  word  of  rebuke,  and  of  the  calling  of 
"  shame,"  at  the  current  hypocrisy  in  morals  and  religion 
seems  demanded.  For  an  age  that  calls  itself  Christian,  and 
that  shudders  at  tales  of  its  savage  ancestors  celebrating  their 
victories  by  drinking  strange  intoxicants  from  human  skulls, 
or  worshipping  their  gods  by  displaying  the  bones  of  their 
victims  in  the  temples,  makes  war  with  just  as  essential  self- 
ishness, and  quaffs  costly  wines  in  honor  of  its  victorious 
generals,  or  buries  them  under  epitaphs  of  immodest  laudation 
in  the  choice  places  of  its  cathedrals,  and  in  the  graveyards  of 
its  churches. 

In  truth,  the  human  race  owes  most  of  its  discipline  in  the 
more  fundamental  social  virtues  to  the  moral  rule  of  God 
througli,  and  in,  its  physical  environment.  Such  virtues  are 
courage,  endurance,  frugality,  and  respect  for  order  and  for 
law.  They  are,  indeed,  basic  virtues  ;  Nature  unaided  by  higher 
revelations  of  God  as  the  perfection  of  Ethical  Spirit,  cannot 
raise  these  virtues  to  their  highest  refinement  and  potency ; 
much  less  can  it  add  to  them  tlie  sweetness  and  lisrht  wliich 
the  inner  experiences  of  revelation  and  inspiration  impart. 
But  they  are  basic  virtues.  And  unless  the  foundations  of 
individual  and  national  character  are  laid  in  them,  and  are 
preserved  in  their  constant  cultivation,  the  higher  moral  and 
religious  perfection  can  never  follow.  For  this  higher  ethical 
refinement,  when  helped  out  by  all  the  sweet  consolations  and 
comforting  hopes  of  religion,  will  not  suflfice  to  dispense  with 
the  stern  discipline  of  God  the  floral  Ruler  of  the  World  by 
his  immanent  presence  in  Nature. 

It  is  the  characteristic  excellence  of  the  relig^ion  of  Christ 
that  it  docs  for  the  liuni:in  soul,  and  for  linman  society,  what 
all  the  better  relii^ions  do,  only  in  a  hii^dier  degree.  It  incul- 
cates, and  effects,  the  recognition  of  God's  presence  and  spirit- 


366  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ual  control  over  man  by  his  immanence  in  man's  physical  en- 
vironment. For  this  reason,  the  truly  pious  soul  endures 
bravely  the  toils  and  misfortunes  of  life,  submits  resignedly  to 
the  divine  will,  after  living  conscientiously,  gives  thanks  for 
all  the  good  things  which  come  to  him,  and  sees  in  them  signs 
of  the  gracious  and  wise,  though  complexly  mysterious,  order- 
ing of  the  interrelations  of  men  with  one  another,  and  of  men 
with  things. 

That  God  is  the  Moral  Ruler  of  the  World  through  his  im- 
manence in  human  society  is  a  belief  which  is  in  some  respects 
more  easy  to  entertain  and  more  comforting  to  hold  than  that 
of  the  divine  rule  in  nature ;  in  other  respects,  however,  the 
truth  is  quite  the  reverse.  Without  social  relations  no  moral 
government  of  any  sort  is  possible,  or  even  conceivable.  Gov- 
ernment implies  society ; — in  some  crude  and  nascent  state  at 
first,  but  with  more  complexity  afterwards,  if  government 
itself  is  to  become  more  highly  developed.  Indeed,  moral  rule 
and  social  relations  cannot  be  dissociated.  On  the  other  hand, 
for  the  mind  which  holds  lofty  and  uncompromising  concep- 
tions of  justice,  truth,  and  benevolence,  the  ills  that  have  their 
origin  in  the  region  of  purely  physical  causes  are  far  easier  to 
bear  with  resignation,  and  to  reconcile  with  the  divine  moral 
perfection,  than  are  those  ills  which  come  through  the  ill- 
constituting  or  ill-managing  of  human  social  organizations. 
From  a  certain  not  unliistorical  point  of  view  it  may  be  said 
that  the  principal  curses  of  humanity  at  large  have  been  laid 
upon  them  by  the  leaders  and  rulers  of  these  organizations. 
Hence,  on  the  one  hand,  springs  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  right 
of  kings,  emperors,  and  other  civil  and  military  officers,  of 
written  and  unwritten  laws,  and  of  the  customs  and  require- 
ments of  the  different  forms  of  social  relations  ;  hence,  on  the 
other  hand,  arises  that  call  to  reform,  and  even  to  revolution, 
which  must  at  times  be  answered,  if  the  moral  government  of 
humanity  is  to  advance  toward  higher  ideals  and  more  satis- 
factory results.     At  one  extreme,  stands  the  demand,  enforced 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE        367 

in  God's  name,  for  a  complete  and  unquestioning  submission. 
At  the  other  extreme  stands  theoretical  and  practical  Nihilism. 
Therefore,  the  representatives  of  religious  interests,  at  one 
time  consign  to  hell,  without  hope  of  pardon,  him  who  ven- 
tures to  lay  hand  upon,  or  even  speak  evil  of,  the  "  Lord's 
anointed;"  at  another  time,  they  call  upon  all  believers,  and 
all  good  and  true  men,  to  rise  and  by  violence  put  down  the 
tyrant.  Between  these  two  demands  many  a  pious  soul  has 
been  sadly  perplexed  to  find  the  way  which  God  would  have 
him  take. 

In  spite  of  such  perplexity,  however,  the  teachings  of  the 
philosophy  of  religion,  both  from  the  theoretical  and  the  his- 
torical points  of  view,  cannot  be  called  in  question.  God  is  the 
Moral  Ruler  of  mankind,  immanent  as  the  Creator,  Upholder, 
and  the  Destroyer  of  human  society.  For  all  these  forms  of 
social  organization,  one  profound  and  profoundly  mysterious 
but  admirably  noble  law  always  reigns  supreme.  In  the  long 
run  and  in  the  large,  it  is  righteousness  which  "exalteth  the 
nation  ;"  but  "sin  is  a  reproach  to  any  people."  And  that  sol- 
idarity of  the  race  which  involves  the  innocent  with  the  wicked, 
is  so  essential  to  even  the  conception  of  an  historical  process  of 
divine  government,  that  to  attempt  to  remove  it,  even  theo- 
retically, involves  the  complete  reversal  and  utter  confusion  of 
all  our  ideas  of  God's  method  of  moral  control.  To  see  the 
wicked  flourisli,  wliile  tlie  righteous  seem  foi-saken,  has  always 
afforded  a  hard  problem  to  religious  faith.  But  good  sense 
and  religion  lx)th  require  that  the  faithful  soul  should  reflect 
upon  the  fact,  enter  into  the  house  of  the  Lord,  and  await  the 
end. 

When  the  student  of  the  philosoph}'  of  history  considei"s  tlie 
grand  sweep  upward  and  downward,  but  on  the  whole  upward, 
of  the  lines  that  mark  the  coui*se  of  human  social  evolution,  he 
may  well  feel  less  difficulty  in  Ixilieving  that  God  as  Moral 
Ruler  is  indeed,  and  always  luis  been,  present  there  in  power. 
The  synthesis  of  forces  employed,  the  overcoming  of  obstacles 


368  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

effected,  the  ruthless  clashing  of  interests  that  by  their  blind 
and  selfish  strivings  are,  after  all,  only  unwittingly  serving 
other  unseen  and  altruistic  ends,  afford  a  drama  of  incompar- 
able interest  and  magnitude.  Piety,  on  contemplating  this 
drama,  acknowledges  that  God's  wa3'S  are  not  as  man's  ways,  and 
that  His  meaning  for  it  all  is  not  the  meaning  w^hich  most  of  the 
actors  have  chiefly  in  mind.  The  actors  are  not,  indeed,  mere 
puppets  which  are  pulled  from  the  divine  hand  by  invisible 
strings.  But,  although  they  are  agents,  they  are  for  the  most 
part  unconsciously  working  out  the  Will  of  the  Moral  Ruler 
who  is  in  and  over  it  all. 

The  particular  institutions  of  Family,  State,  and  Church,  are 
yet  more  specific  modes  of  the  divine  moral  government  of  the 
race.  In  the  better  significance  of  the  word,  with  all  the  faults 
belonging  to  their  special  forms  of  organization  and  of  the  indi- 
viduals composmg  them,  they  are  still  distinctly  theocratic  in- 
stitutions. Between  the  State  and  its  government,  and  between 
the  Church  and  its  particular  form  of  constituting  and  officer- 
ing itself,  we  are  always  warranted  in  making  a  distinction. 
That  human  beings  should  live  in  families,  develop  statehood, 
and  organize  themselves  as  brethren  for  a  common  religious 
life,  is  so  plainly  the  Divine  Will,  that  to  deny  it  would  seem 
to  make  all  attribution  of  a  moral  purpose  to  the  Being  of  the 
World  quite  impossible.  And  in  fact,  it  is  in  and  through 
these  institutions  chiefly  that  the  ethical  control  and  the  ethi- 
cal evolution  of  humanity  has  taken  place.  It  is  also  within 
the  limits  of  the  same  institutions  chiefly  that  those  more  im- 
mediate modes  of  the  moral  rule,  and  of  the  redemption  of  the 
world,  which  are  known  as  revelation  and  inspiration,  have 
produced  their  greatest  results. 

The  results  of  the  psychological  and  historical  sciences  are 
not  inconsistent  with  this  conception  of  the  moral  evolution  of 
the  race  under  the  immanent  divine  control ;  even  when  they 
have  not  as  yet  come  to  announce  essentially  the  same  truths, 
although  in  a  different  form  of  words.     The  conception   of  the 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE       369 

Being  of  the  World  as  indwelling  and  dominant  Ethical  Spirit 
is  entirely  consonant  with  all  that  these  sciences  can  most 
surely  say  of  the  past,  or  most  confidently  predict  of  the  future. 
The  proofs  that  God  is  indeed  the  Moral  Ruler  of  the  World 
are  commensurate — no  more,  and  yet  no  less — with  the  moral 
nature  and  moral  development  of  the  human  race.  Certainly, 
if  man  had  not  himself  become  an  ethical  spirit,  he  would  not 
conceive  of  the  gods,  the  invisible  and  superhuman  spirits,  as 
moral  rulers.  And  only  when  he  has  developed  a  higher  de- 
gree of  moral  spirituality,  and  has  also  found  expression  for  it 
in  certain  forms  of  social  organizations,  does  he  arrive  at  the 
conception  of  One  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  as  the  Moral  Ruler  of 
the  World.  But  man  has  developed  an  ideal  of  ethically 
perfect  government,  and  he  has  felt  himself  impelled  to,  and 
justified  in,  attributing  this  ideal  to  the  Supreme  Reality. 
While,  then,  an  empirical  method,  which  aims  to  treat  of  tlie 
phenomena  of  man's  moral  life  and  development  without  resort 
to  metaphysics  or  to  the  faitlis  of  religion,  leaves  unsolved  the 
more  profound  and  ultimate  problems  of  ethics  ;  the  same  phe- 
nomena receive  illumination  and  enforcement  from  the  higher 
ethico-religious  point  of  view.  To  repeat  here  the  conclusions 
derived  from  a  survey  of  the  field  of  ethics  :*  "  The  answer  of 
psychological  analysis  and  of  historical  insight  does  not  furnish 
all  that  the  philosophy  of  conduct  demands.  How  can  man 
do  for  himself  this  significant  work  of  idealizing,  unless  his 
nature  is  born  of  an  Absolute  Etliical  Spirit?  How  can  he 
develop  such  an  Ideal,  in  wliose  life  he  shares,  unless  his  his- 
tory may  be  understood  from  the  side  of  the  '  Overman  '  as 
under  the  inspiration  and  guidance  of  this  Spirit?  It  is  in  the 
answer  to  tliese  inquiries  that  the  metiiphysics  of  etliics  finds 
itself  obliged  to  adopt  some  position  corresponding  to  that  from 
whicli  religion  regards  all  tlie  development  of  humanity.  Of 
this  tenet  of  the  religious  consciousness   Pfleiderer  forcefully 

1  See  the  author's  I'hilosophy  of  Conduct,  p.  628;  and  for  a  fuller  discus- 
sion of  the  whole  problem,  chapters  XXV  and  XXVI  of  the  same  work. 

24 


370  PHILOSOPHY  OF  PvELIGION 

says  :  ^  '  And  here  too  Paul  pointed  out  the  right  way,  founding 
his  philosophy  of  religion  on  the  thought  which  in  modern 
thinking  must  always  be  the  principal  point  of  view:  the 
thought,  namely,  of  a  development  of  the  moral  spirit  under 
the  guiding  education  of  God.  Each  stage  of  the  develop- 
ment has  its  corresponding  moral  ideal ;  none  of  them  is  for- 
tuitous or  arbitrary  ;  each  rests  on  a  divine  ordinance  and  is 
good  and  necessary  for  its  own  time,  and  for  its  own  time 
only.'  " 

It  is  clear,  then,  from  the  very  essential  nature  of  man's 
moral  ideals  and  moral  development  that  an  impersonal  and 
non-moral  view  of  the  grounds  on  which  these  ideals  and  this 
development  repose,  can  never  afford  the  least  semblance  of  a 
satisfactory  solution  for  ethical  problems.  In  a  word,  if  the 
ideals  have  in  fact  influenced  human  history,  and  if  under  this 
influence  actual  progress  of  an  ethical  character  has  taken 
place,  then  the  ultimate  explanation  of  such  a  racial  experience 
must  be  found  in  the  religious  doctrine  of  God  as  the  moral 
Ruler  of  the  World.  Undoubtedly  the  proximate  explanation 
of  this  form  of  man's  progress  must  be  found  in  his  own  nature, 
with  its  reactions  upon  his  changing  environment,  under  the 
laws  of  an  ethical  and  spiritual  evolution.  But  the  more  this 
proximate  explanation  is  expanded  and  perfected,  with  a  view 
to  account  for  the  facts  of  experience,  the  more  imperatively 
and  comprehensively  does  it  demand  some  more  ultimate  ex- 
planation. The  ultimate  explanation  can  only  be  found  in  the 
Being  of  the  World  ;  and  it  can  only  be  found  there,  if  this 
Being  is  conceived  of  as  Ethical  Spirit,  manifesting  itself  pro- 
gressively as  the  Moral  Ruler  of  the  World.  As  a  modern 
writer  has  said :  ^ "  The  moral  World-order,  regarded  as  an 
active  Principle,  is  God  as  Spirit.  Only  the  Self,  only  Ego- 
hood,  is  the  home  of  all  that  is  Ideal." 

The  faith  that  is  founded  on  religious  experience,  when  taken 

iThe  Philosophy  of  Rehgion,  IV,  p.  254. 

2  Moriz  Carriere,  Die  sittliche  Weltordnung,  p.  405. 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE        371 

at  its  highest  expression,  does  give,  and  it  alone  gives,  a  satisfac- 
tory answer  to  the  ultimate  problems  of  ethics.  This  answer  is 
the  rational  postulate  that  the  Personal  Absolute,  conceived  of 
as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  is  the  Ground  of  the  moral  order  of  the 
world.  Or  more  naively  and  popularly  expressed,  and  in  a  more 
restricted  way :  God  is  tlie  Moral  Ruler  of  humanity.  "  In 
man's  moral  nature  the  voice  of  the  Personal  Absolute  is  more 
plainly  to  be  heard.  Faith  in  this  voice  is  imperative  here. 
The  account  of  the  origin  and  the  ongoing  of  the  physical  uni- 
verse may  seem  complete  without  tlie  recognition  of  a  Spirit 
whose  self-conscious  Life  is  the  source  and  the  inspiration  of 
an  otherwise  dead  and  even  non-existent  nature.  .  .  . 
But  for  the  origin  and  the  development  of  man's  ethical  and 
spiritual  life — with  its  laws  that  transcend  all  experience  of 
consequences,  its  sanctions  that  evoke  a  devotion  which  over- 
steps all  the  bounds  of  a  merely  personal  regard,  its  ideals  that 
are  ever  arising  and  fading,  but  only  to  appear  more  bright  and 
alluring  and  inspiring  still — what  account  can  possibly  be 
found  in  impersonal  cosmic  processes,  or  in  a  World-Ground 
that  is  not  itself  an  ethical  and  spiritual  Life?" 

"  Especially,  however,  does  the  heart  of  man  crave  the  assis- 
tance of  some  well-assured  hope  in  its  effort  to  bear  dutifully 
the  grave  contradictions  which  everywhere  exist  between  the 
actual  and  the  ethically  Ideal.  That  things  are  not  as  they 
ought  to  be,  is  a  much  more  trying  discovery  than  tliat  things 
are  not  as  they  seem.  The  antithesis  between  Appearance  and 
Reality  which  lias  so  often  been  exploited  in  a  showily  dialecti- 
cal rather  tlian  in  a  profoundly  philosopliical  manner  i«,  fi)r 
tlie  most  part,  a  specious  and  not  very  ahirming  affair.  Hut 
the  contradictions  which  exist  between  the  moral  and  social 
ideals  of  liumanity  and  what  is  actual  in  human  conduct,  and 
in  the  constitution  of  liuman  affairs,  so  far  as  it  is  dopendently 
related  to  conduct,  are  very  real  and  very  disturbing.  That 
whatever  appear^^  really  iV, — this  is  a  proposition  which  may 
well  command  the  attention,  and   linally  the  consent,  of  every 


372  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

thoughtful  mind.  But  that  whatever  is  in  conduct  and  in 
character  among  men  is  right — this  is  a  proposition  which, 
however  often  it  is  made  and  with  whatever  brilliant  dialectics 
it  may  be  supported,  is  opposed  to  all  the  most  firmly  seated 
and  valuable  moral  convictions  of  mankind." 

"  The  conflict  between  the  real  of  human  experience  and  the 
Ideal  constructed  by  human  thought  and  imagination,  and  fol- 
lowed— however  fitfully  and  imperfectly — by  human  endeavors, 
is  the  eternal  conflict.  According  to  the  myths  of  the  ancients 
and  the  theologies  of  modern  times,  it  was  waged  in  invisible, 
supermundane  regions,  before  it  began  to  be  waged  upon  earth. 
The  theoretical  solution  of  the  conflict,  as  respects  its  origin, 
its  fullest  significance,  and  its  ultimate  issue,  is,  however,  as 
satisfactorily  treated  as  is  compatible  with  the  limitations  of 
human  knowledge,  when  it  is  shown  how  one  may  believe  that 
the  ultimate  Source  both  of  the  reality  and  of  the  ideals  which 
still  await  realization  is  one  and  the  same  World-Ground. 
This  World-Ground  is  a  Personal  Will,  that  is  pledged  and  able 
to  effect  the  progressive  realization  of  the  ideals  which,  too,  owe 
their  origin  and  historical  development  to  Him.  In  a  word, 
the  same  Ethical  Spirit  who  inspires  the  moral  ideals  of  man, 
and  who  reveals  his  own  being  in  their  historical  evolution, 
will  secure,  and  is  securing,  the  realization  of  the  ideals  in  the 
world's  actual  on-going.  If  one  may  have  a  reasonable  faith 
in  this  conclusion,  then  certainly,  however  severe  the  temporary 
conflict  may  be,  and  whether  this  conflict  be  raging  within  the 
soul  of  the  individual  or  within  the  social  organization,  its  final 
issue  and  fuller  significance  are  secure.  Well-founded  moral 
Optimism  makes  large  demands  upon  religious  faith.  Only 
when  one  is  confident  that  there  is  a  Power  in  human  history, 
which  is  over  and  throughout  it  all,  and  which  effectively 
makes  for  righteousness,  can  one  hopefully  survey  the  large  and 
long-existing  disruption  between  the  actual  moral  conditions  of 
humanity  and  humanity's  own  highest  moral  ideals.  The  only 
power  which  can  be  conceived  of  as  at  once  interested  and 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE        373 

suitable  to  effect  this  progressive  realization  of  the  actual  with 
the  Ideal  is  God." ' 

Belief  in  God  as  the  Moral  Ruler  of  the  World  leads  directly 
and  logically  to  the  doctrine  of  a  universal  Providence.  The 
conception  of  Providence  is  based  upon  the  conviction  that  all 
single  events,  as  well  as  the  whole  course  of  the  individual's 
life,  are  items  in,  or  parts  of,  the  floral  Order  of  the  World. 
If,  however,  this  religious  doctrine  is  to  be  defensible  from  the 
points  of  view  held  by  a  philosophy  of  religion,  it  must  be 
freed  from  certain  defects,  which  both  the  popular  feeling  and 
the  reflections  of  systematic  theology  have  too  often  imparted 
to  it.  These  defects  are  chiefly  the  following  tliree:  (1)  Such 
a  separation  between  the  sphere  of  Providence  and  the  sphere 
of  Nature,  as  constitutes  a  return  to  the  antithesis  between  the 
natural  and  the  supernatural ;  (2)  a  restriction  of  the  doctrine 
to  special  instances  or  particular  experiences,  or  a  classification, 
based  on  essentially  different  marks,  into  so-called  "special 
providences  "  and  "  general  Providence  ;"  and  finally  (3),  a  self- 
ish form  of  conception,  which,  if  carried  to  its  legitimate  con- 
clusion, destroys  the  perfection  of  those  very  moral  attributes 
that  make  the  doctrine  of  Providence  a  teacher  and  inspirer 
of  the  spirit  of  true  piety. 

All  Providence  is  a  manifestation  of  the  Supernatural ;  but 
the  true  conception  of  Providence  docs  not  place  the  em- 
phasis upon  God's  foresight  in  a  manner  to  suggest  that  the 
worhl  has,  in  part  at  least,  or  quite  habitually — in  its  ordinary 
operations  and  humdrum  life — slipped  from  the  divine  con- 
trol. Providence  does  not  interrupt  the  order  of  nature ;  it 
does  not  prevent  Deity  from  making  His  "sun  to  rise  on  the 
evil  and  on  the  good  ;  "  or  from  sending  His  '*rain  on  tlie  just 
and  on  the  unjust."  While,  on  the  one  hand,  the  conception 
])oints  tlio  pious  soul  to  tlio  way  that  divine  wisdom  :\U(]  good- 
ness show  thcmselvL's  in  tlu;  fi'cding  of  the  birds,  and  in  the 
clothing  with  l>i'auty  of  tlie  fl o Wei's  ;  on  the  (tlhcr  hand,  it 
*  Quoted  from  the  Philosophy  of  Conduct,  p.    G33/. 


374  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

teaches  that  the  same  wisdom  and  goodness  destroys  the  former 
by  starvation,  cold,  and  other  enemies,  and  breaks  up  the 
lovely  structure  of  the  other  by  sunshine,  drought,  and  frost. 
In  this  divine  activity  Nature  and  the  Supernatural  are  not 
antagonistic  or  even  temporarily  separated  ;  they  remain  united 
in  the  same  Moral  Order  as  regarded  from  different  points  of 
view.  The  peculiar  impressiveness  of  any  incident,  as  regards 
the  directness  and  clearness  with  which  it  points  to  a  Supernat- 
ural presence,  is  a  purely  subjective  affair.  All  providences  are 
alike  natural  and  supernatural,  according  to  the  point  of  view 
from  which  the  observer  chooses,  or  is  temporarily  interested 
or  impelled,  to  regard  them. 

So,  too,  does  the  distinction  sometimes  made  between  gen- 
eral Providence  and  especial  providences  appear  as  a  wholly 
subjective  affair.  Certain  happenings  in  the  life  of  the  indi- 
vidual, or  of  the  community,  and  certain  events  in  the  world's 
history,  have,  indeed,  a  special  impressiveness,  on  account  of 
their  more  obvious  and  important  bearing  upon  those  spiritual 
interests  in  which  religion  finds  its  chief  concern.  This  is 
mere  matter  of  fact ;  and  it  is  matter  of  fact  which,  although 
consisting  originally  of  human  opinion  and  emotion,  tends  to 
realize  itself  as  an  important  force  in  objective  events.  He 
who  thinks  that  the  divine  presence  has  been  manifested  in 
an  unusual  way  in  any  event  of  his  life,  does  something  differ- 
ent in  view  of  this  thought.  In  this  way  God  specializes  His 
Will  through  the  impression  made  upon  the  conduct  of  man ; 
therefore,  to  maintain  that  all  events  are  equally  important  for 
the  securing  of  the  divine  final  purposes  contradicts  the  ap- 
parent truth,  while  not  making  the  belief  in  the  universality 
of  Providence  any  more  reasonable  or  practically  helpful.  But 
from  the  point  of  view  of  pragmatic  history,  as  well  as  from 
that  of  the  philosopliy  of  religion,  a  division  of  providences 
into  two  classes  is  quite  untenable.  So  closely  interwoven  are 
seemingly  trivial  events  with  those  of  the  most  stupendous 
importance,  that  the  web  of  this  history  cannot  safely  be  broken 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE        375 

in  any  place,  either  to  let  God  within  or  to  let  him  escape 
without.  Providence  is,  then,  always  and  everywhere,  at  the 
same  time  special  and  universal.^  Its  universality  does  not 
contrast  with,  but  the  rather  provides  for  and  includes,  all 
special  and  minute  providences.  It  is  at  once  most  intimate 
and  close-fitting,  and  also  most  comprehensive. 

In  order  to  have  the  complete  trust  in  Providence  which  the 
spirit  of  piety  invokes  and  demands,  it  is  not  necessary  to 
think  of  one's  self,  or  one's  family,  or  one's  country,  as  the 
favorite  of  God.  Indeed,  all  such  thought  is  itself  essentially 
impious.  But  a  rational  faith  sees  no  reasons  for  setting  lim- 
its to  the  divine  wisdom  and  love  in  its  regard  for  all  the  de- 
tails of  every  individual's  life.  Indeed,  since  all — both  things 
and  souls,  and  among  souls,  both  the  lower  animals  and  men — 
are  parts  of  that  one  Moral  Order,  in  and  over  which  God 
rules,  the  care  of  each  individual  being  is  ever  present  in  the 
mind  of  God.  This,  at  least,  is  religion's  supreme  faith  in 
Providence.  I  and  mine,  but  also  you  and  yours,  and  he  and 
his, — all  selves  and  all  things,  are  duly  and  lovingly  tiiken 
account  of  in  the  divine  moral  government. 

The  belief  in  Providence  is  religion's  way  of  expressing  its 
confidence  in  the  moral  order  of  the  world,  and  in  the  final 
triumph  of  moral  ideals.  That  which  the  metaphysics  of  eth- 
ics, so  often  and  yet  so  inadequately,  tries  to  express  in  imper- 
sonal tonus,  the  philosophy  of  religion  refere  to  the  moral  and 
providential  rule  of  a  personal  God.  Something  a[)pi'oaching 
the  confidence  that  all  which  comes  to  the  individual  is  the 
ordering  of  a  wise  and  holy  Divine  Will  has  belonged  to  the 
more  enlightened  of  the  pious  in  all  ages.  '*  I  call  upon 
thee,  O  ni}'  father  Ainon,"  exclaimed  Rameses  II  at  the  battle 
of  Kadshu:  -  ''  My  many  soldiers  have  abandoned  me  ;  none  of 
my  hoiiiemen  hath  looked  toward  nu'  ;  and  when  I  called  tliem, 
none  hath  listened  to  my  voice.     P>nt   T   ])elieve  that  thou  art 

*  See  wluit  hu8  iilreutly  l)cen  siiid,  Chap.   XXXVII  of  thia  Volume. 
'  Ilenouf,  The  Religion  of  Ancient  Eg^'pt,  p.  237. 


376  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

worth  more  to  me  than  a  million  of  soldiers,  than  a  hundred 
thousand  horsemen."  Though  Yahweh  slay  me,  yet  will  I 
trust  in  him,  vras  the  persuasion  of  the  Psalmist.  And  not  in 
times  of  emergency  alone,  but  in  the  quiet  life  of  every  day, 
God's  manifestation  of  himself  as  Providence  to  the  pious  soul 
is  a  constant  experience.  In  a  manuscript  volume  from  which 
Dr.  Martin  quotes,^  we  may  read  the  declaration  of  faith  from 
a  Buddhist  abbot :  "  If  we  sincerely  remember  how  near  to  us 
is  Buddha,  then  we  may  dare  to  accept  the  nourishment  that 
heaven  and  earth  affords."  To  pray,  ''  Give  us  this  day  our 
daily  bread,"  is  to  utter  vain  and  mocking  words  for  the  man 
who  has  no  faith  in  Providence. 

It  has  been  in  the  virtual  possession  of  this  faith  that  the 
best  of  the  race,  the  noblest  thinkers  and  actors  in  human  his- 
tory, have  with  an  increasing  confidence,  and  often  with  a  pas- 
sionate and  undying  enthusiasm,  proclaimed  the  ultimate  tri- 
umph of  righteousness.  Their  optimism  has  not  been  economic 
or  anthropological ;  it  has  been  ethical  and  religious.  They  do 
not  now  believe  that  commerce,  or  science,  or  art,  without 
righteousness,  can  regenerate  humanity,  or  elevate  the  race 
to  its  highest  attainable,  much  less  to  an  ideally  perfect,  social 
condition.  In  all  these  respects,  believers  in  Providence  are, 
perhaps,  oftener  pessimistic  than  optimistic.  They  die — gen- 
eration after  generation,  for  hundreds  of  years,  they  have  been 
dying — with  faith  unwavering,  but  with  eyes  unblessed  by  the 
sight  of  what  they  have  so  greatly  longed  to  see.  They  have 
no  weak  complaints  to  offer,  because  they  have  themselves  suf- 
fered much  in  the  interests  of  righteousness  ;  for  the  cause  is 
their  ideal,  and  devotion  to  the  ideal  still  appears  to  them  worth 
far  more  than  all  it  can  have  cost.  To  these  pious  souls  the 
religious  truth  of  a  Divine  Moral  Order,  which  incloses  and 
protects  the  things  that  have  worth,  is  a  comfort  of  the  su- 
premest  kind.  This  is  the  real  doctrine  of  Providence.  It  is 
the  voice  which  breaks  and  scatters  the  darkness  brought  on 

1  Lore  of  Cathay,  p.  255. 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE         377 

by  the  temporary  eclipse  of  righteousness,  with  the  command : 
"  Let  there  be  light."  Say  ye  to  the  righteous  :  "  It  shall 
be  well  with  him  ; " — and  not  in  isolation,  or  as  one  of  a 
select  few. 

It  is  in  connection  with  the  religious  doctrine  of  God  as 
Moral  Ruler  and  Providence  that  the  place  of  prayer  in  the 
world-order  deserves  recognition  anew.  As  to  its  subjective 
value  for  the  life  of  religion,  its  moral  effect  upon  the  man 
who  prays,  enough  has  already  been  said.^  But  that  conception 
of  the  system  of  cosmic  existences,  forces,  and  processes,  with 
their  laws,  as  a  dependent  manifestation  of  God,  which  religion 
teaches  under  the  symbols  of  Creator,  Upholder,  and  Moral 
Ruler  or  Providence,  opens  up  further  possibilities,  and  pro- 
poses yet  more  difficult  problems  to  our  reflective  thinking. 
Is  man's  prayer,  when  it  is  the  expression  of  the  filial  attitude 
toward  the  Divine  Being,  so  related  to  the  world-order  as  to 
have  an  effect  on  its  events  ? 

It  would  seem  to  need  little  reflection  in  order  to  reach  the 
conclusion  that  neither  of  two  extreme  opinions  in  answer  to 
this  inquiry  can  justify  itself  at  the  bar  of  either  science  or 
philosophy.  Even  the  most  strictly  mechanical  view  of  the 
world-order  must  admit  that  prayer  may,  under  certain  circum- 
stances, have  an  important  effect  in  modifying  the  course  of 
physical  events.  Indeed,  within  certain  limits  not  easy  to  be 
fixed,  the  more  strict  and  minute  the  tenure  of  the  principle  of 
mechanism,  the  more  sure  and  widespreading  becomes  the 
physical  influence  of  the  subjective  attitude  of  prayer.  Taken 
ill  its  strictest  form,  the  mechanical  conception  regards  the 
Cosmos  as  a  totality,  including  all  of  man's  life,  which  is  so 
sensitive  throughout  the  whole  to  every  slightest  change  in 
every  minutest  part,  tliat  ceaseless  and  boundless  vibrations 
proceed  from  every  finger-point,  no  matter  how  delicate  itij 
touch  may  seem  to  be.  Especially  does  this  conception  connect 
together,  in  terms  of  some  comprehensive  theory  of  relations, 

»  Vol.  I.  chap.  XXL 


378  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

all  the  phenomena  of  human  consciousness  and  certain  corre- 
lated changes  in  the  bodily  mechanism.  No  most  interior, 
unheard  whisper,  or  even  muttered  thought,  of  a  prayer  could, 
then,  fail  of  its  record  in  some  corresponding  physical  event. 
Some  Hindu  devotee,  or  Buddliist  monk,  or  Christian  saint,  is 
always  praying  in  silence  ;  and  in  silence,  too,  a  responsive 
throb  is  issuing  from  this  center  of  activity,  and  going  out  on 
every  side  to  the  ends  of  the  universe,  and  to  the  end  of  time. 
Or,  shall  we  not  rather  say,  that  the  same  Being  of  the  World 
which  expresses  its  will  in  souls  as  the  conscious  attitude  of 
prayer,  is  expressing  the  same  will  in  countless,  unknown  other 
ways,  throughout  its  own  entire  Being  ? 

If  now  this  scientific  picture  of  the  relation  of  the  subjec- 
tive attitude  of  prayer  to  the  World-order  is  translated  into 
terms  familiar  to  the  experiences  of  religion,  the  two  seem 
to  be  by  no  means  wholly  antithetic.  Given  the  belief  that  all 
this  strict  correlation  of  human  desires  and  feelings  with  the 
ongoing  of  things  is  the  total  expression  of  the  wise  and  good 
Will  of  Him  who  is  in  and  over  all ;  then  piety  may  w^ell  be 
satisfied  and  encouraged  thereby.  The  soul  of  the  true  believer 
in  Providence  can  have  no  higher  ambition  than  to  fulfil  the 
purposes  of  this  Will,  in  just  such  place  in  this  world-order, 
and  by  just  such  measure  and  manner  of  activities,  as  accords 
with  these  purposes.  Thus  the  one  prayer  which  underlies 
and  interpenetrates  the  spirit  and  meaning  of  all  concrete  pe- 
titions becomes  :  "  Thy  Will  be  done  " — universally,  *'  as  in 
Heaven,  so  on  Earth." 

That  this  habitual  spirit  of  prayer  and  all  its  particular  ex- 
pressions, whether  inarticulate  or  spoken,  should  influence  the 
bodily  mechanism,  and  through  this  mechanism  the  physical 
environment,  of  him  who  prays,  is  a  scientific  inference  based 
upon  all  that  we  most  surely  know  of  the  dynamic  relations 
existing  in  the  order  of  nature  between  the  human  mind  and 
the  human  body.  Modern  psycho-physics  and  physiological 
psychology  abound  with  forceful  illustrations  of  this  principle. 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE       379 

Upon  this  conclusion  converges  our  experience  with  the  most 
ordinary  transactions  of  the  Self  in  its  everyday  life,  and  also 
with  the  curious  phenomena  of  nerve-anastomosis,  mental 
healing,  hypnosis  with  hallucinations  by  suggestion,  etc.  The 
proposal  to  test  the  efficacy  of  prayer  by  experiment  with  two 
hospitals,  otherwise  equally  favorable  for  the  recovery  of  their 
patients,  but  one  of  which  encourages  and  practices  petition  to 
the  Divine  Will  for  recovery  of  the  sick,  and  the  other  not,  is 
in  its  very  nature  impossible  of  accomplishment.  But  could 
it  be  carried  out,  there  is  no  doubt  as  to  what  the  result  would 
sliow.  Of  course  other  things  being  equal,  those  who  pray 
for  themselves,  or  who  know  that  others  are  praying  for  them, 
are  likeliest  to  overcome  the  attacks  of  certain  kinds  of  disease. 
This  is  simply  to  predict  a  result  in  accordance  with  what  we 
know  experimentally  of  the  powerful  effect  of  psychological  in- 
fluences upon  the  most  primary  processes  of  digestion  and  nu- 
trition. 

On  the  contrary,  to  hold  that  the  Divine  Will,  as  manifested 
in  a  Providence  that  is  at  once  universal  and  minute,  is  subject 
to  alteration  of  its  wise  and  good  purposes  at  the  instance  of 
human  desire,  however  capricious,  if  only  it  be  insistent  and 
credulous  enough,  is  as  abhorrent  to  piety  as  it  is  intolerable 
to  science.  Such  a  conception  of  God  is  indeed  impious.  Neither 
can  the  philosophy  of  religion  hesitate  to  affirm  once  for  all, 
and  firmly  to  hold,  the  position  that  this  Will  hius  expressed 
itself  irrevocably — so  to  say — in  certain  uniform  ways  of  the 
])eliavi(jr  of  things.  Indeed,  were  this  not  so,  there  could  Ixj 
no  w(jrld-order  for  science  to  study  from  its  point  of  view, 
and  for  religious  faith  to  accept  as  coining  from  the  hand  of 
the  Moral  Ruler  of  mankind.  A  certiiin  so-called  *'  uniformity 
of  nature"  is  indispensable  as  a  basis  for  all  ethical  and  spirit- 
ual control.  At  the  same  time,  science  needs  perpetually  to 
remind  itself,  and  religious  faith  may  reasonably  cherish  the 
conviction,  that  this  so-called  'Mmifonnity  "  is  iti^elf  no  rigid, 
machine-like  affair.     That  ''like  produces  like,"  or  that  ''the 


380  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

same  causes  are  followed  by  the  same  effects,"  and  all  similar 
formulas,  are  as  useless  practically  as  they  are  barren  of  real 
truth. 

For  exact  likeness  and  precise  sameness  of  causes  nowhere 
occur  in  human  experience,  whether  with  things  or  with  selves. 
Each  individual  being,  from  star  to  atom,  and  each  center  of 
psychical  activity  from  amoeba  to  man,  is  unlike  every  other ; 
each  has  somehow  a  special  constitution,  value,  and  mission  of 
its  own.  Nor  are  there  any  recurrences  of  like  events,  either 
in  conscious  lives  or  unconscious  things.  The  World-order  is 
itself  a  ceaseless  process  of  new  productions,  both  of  existences 
and  of  events.  So  far  as  man's  history  is  a  part  of  this  order, 
a  single  atom  or  amoeba  may  exert  a  more  powerful  immediate 
influence  than  the  bulkiest  star. 

It  would  seem,  then,  both  scientific  and  pious  to  recognize  the 
peculiar  sphere  of  influence  of  prayer  over  physical  events,  as 
comprising  those  happenings  in  the  production  of  which  hu- 
man wills  and  natural  forces  co-operate.  Within  this  sphere, 
it  is  both  a  matter  of  scientific  fact  and  a  postulate  of  the  faith 
of  piety,  that  the  expression  of  human  wills,  whether  in  prayer 
or  otherwise,  is,  so  to  say,  taken  account  of  by  the  Being  of 
the  World.  From  the  point  of  view  of  science  on  the  one 
hand,  prayer  itself  is  a  dynamic  factor,  the  value  and  efficiency 
of  which  must  be  recognized,  and  which  may  be — although 
only  obscurely  and  partially — experienced  and  estimated.  In 
particular  cases,  however,  it  must  be  left  an  open  question  for 
the  full  solution  of  which  the  data  are  never  likely  to  come  to 
hand.  But  this  same  thing  is  true  of  every  such  factor  which 
contributes  its  quota — how  large,  how  small,  we  know  not — to 
the  evolution  of  the  Cosmos  as  a  whole.  For  science,  beyond 
a  very  limited  sphere,  agnosticism,  and  not  dogmatic  denial,  is 
the  only  rational  attitude.  From  the  point  of  view  of  religion, 
however,  prayer  is  an  essential  of  its  subjective  life  ;  and  it  is 
also  a  valuable  and  a  valid  expression  of  the  rational  faith, 
which  piety  has  in  God  as  Moral  Ruler,  and  as  Providence,  for 


GOD  AS  MORAL  RULER  AND  PROVIDENCE       381 

every  individual  event  in  any  individual's  experience.  Be- 
tween these  two  views,  philosophy  sees  no  theoretical  in- 
compatibility ;  while  it  recognizes  the  superior  worth  of  tlie 
religious  view  for  the  practical  ends  of  moral  and  religious 
development. 


CHAPTER  XLI 

GOD  AS   KEDEEMEE 

The  relations  in  which  religion  places  God  toward  the  World, 
in  order  that  he  may  become  its  Redeemer,  are  above  all  others 
distinctly  personal  and  spiritual.  In  a  word,  the  very  culmi- 
nation of  that  manifestation  which  God  makes  of  Himself  as 
omnipotent  and  omnipresent  Holy  Spirit  is  reached  in  the  his- 
torical and  progressive  redemption  of  the  race.  Thus  it  is  the 
doctrine  of  Divine  Redemption  which  includes  the  answer  that 
alone  fully  satisfies  the  most  enlightened  and  profound  religious 
experience — its  needs,  its  hopes,  its  aspirations,  and  its  ideals. 
In  the  form  of  this  doctrine,  religious  faith  bears  its  supreme 
witness  to  the  reality  of  God  and  to  the  actuality  of  his  pres- 
ence among  men.  Without  this  doctrine,  and  without  the  ac- 
tual progressive  realization  of  its  truth  by  humanity,  religion 
itself  fails  of  its  highest  mission. 

It  is,  indeed,  no  superficial  mark  which  suggests  the  division 
of  all  religions  into  "  religions  of  salvation  "  and  those  that  are 
not.  The  history  of  man's  religious  development  expressly 
shows  that  those  forms  of  belief  which  do  not  promise  redemp- 
tion to  their  adherents  and  to  the  race,  must,  as  the  race  ad- 
vances in  culture,  be  set  aside  as  unworthy  of  serious  attention. 
And  those  religions  which  make  the  promise  to  the  ear,  but 
break  it  to  the  heart  and  brain  and  busy  hand  of  man,  must 
finally  be  convicted  of  having  contributed  to  the  superabundant 
illusion  and  vanity  of  human  life.  What,  then,  will  remain  for 
humanity?  It  may  try  to  console  itself,  and  to  quench  its  in- 
satiable  thirst  for  the  Ideal,  with  socialistic  dreams,  imperial- 


GOD  AS  REDEEMER  383 

istic  plans,  or  selfish  strivings  for  the  place  of  the  "  Overman  " 
among  the  common  herd  of  men.  A  few  may  comfort  them- 
selves with  imaginary  constructions  of  a  universal  but  non- 
religious  altruism.  But  religion,  as  a  rational  faith  in  an 
omnipotent,  omniscient,  and  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  must  be 
renounced.  The  alternative  for  religion  is  either  itself  to  per- 
ish or  else  actually,  but  progressively,  to  effect  the  redemption 
of  mankind. 

These  seemingly  abstract  propositions  may  be  somewhat 
firmly  placed  upon  an  historical  basis  by  considering  how  it  has 
come  about  that  the  great  world-religions  are  in  general  pre- 
eminently "religions  of  salvation."  This  fact  is  the  essential 
truth  in  man's  religious  evolution.  The  evolution  itself  in- 
cludes the  development  of  two  correlated  factors  in  the  reli- 
gious experience  of  mankind.  One  of  these  is  the  conscious- 
ness of  wrongdoing  as  sin  against  the  Divine  Being,  and  the 
consequent  feeling  of  need  of  Divine  forgiveness  and  help ; 
the  other  is  the  belief  in  the  holiness  of  God,  conceived  of  as 
Himself  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  and  so,  at  the  same  time,  anti- 
thetic to  moral  imperfection  in  his  creatures. 

Man's  need  of  redemption,  and  the  growing  consciousness  of 
that  need,  is  the  conclusion  reached  by  a  study  of  his  ethico- 
religious  development.  The  "consciousness  of  sin,"  iu  the 
stricter  meaning  of  these  words, — the  meaning,  that  is,  to  which 
the  promise  of  redemption  corresponds, — is  a  relatively  late 
experience.  The  more  primitive  expressions  of  the  religious 
consciousness  contain  it,  if  at  all,  only  in  germinal  and  unde- 
veloped form.  With  savage  man,  if  the  things  go  wrong  that 
are  supposed  to  l)e  under  the  control  of  any  pjirticulargod,  the 
supposition  arises  that  this  same  god  is  offended  at  some  neg- 
lect or  indignity  on  the  part  of  the  worshipper.  But  as  man's 
etliical  conception  of  Deity  becomes  more  exalted  and  compre- 
liensive,  ho  regards  liis  own  moral  weaknesses  ami  impurities 
as  offences  against  Deity.  In  general,  when  the  gods  are  ideal- 
ized as  themselves  more  perfect,  they  recjuire  a  higher  ethical 


384  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

standard  in  their  followers.  Some  of  tlie  divine  beings  at  least 
become  the  especially  strenuous  promoters  of  righteousness, 
the  defenders  of  those  who  do  w^hat  is  right  in  the  divine  sight, 
the  punishers  of  those  who  do  what  is  "wrong.  Finally,  as  man 
identifies  his  highest  Ideal  of  moral  perfection  with  the  om- 
nipotent and  omniscient  Holy  Will,  all  his  own  moral  weak- 
nesses and  impurities  are  felt  to  be  offences  against  God.  The 
consciousness  of  sin  is,  then,  tJie  theocratic  form  of  conscience. 

The  order  which  is  actually  traceable  in  the  history  of  man's 
development  accords  with  the  psychological  principle  which 
controls  this  form  of  ethico-religious  exercise  at  the  present 
time.  Devout  souls  feel  their  wrongdoing  as  sin,  grieve  over 
their  moral  imperfections  as  a  breach  of  perfect  moral  union 
with  the  Ethical  Spirit  who  is  the  Object  of  their  faith  and 
worship — their  supreme  Ideal  of  a  worthy  Life.  The  frequency 
and  the  poignancy  of  this  consciousness  of  sin  do  not  depend 
upon  the  multitude  and  magnitude  of  the  individual's  trans- 
gressions, objectively  considered.  The  rather  are  they  de- 
pendent upon  the  subjective  condition  of  the  religious  life ; 
upon  that  filial  attitude  toward  God  in  which  subjective  reli- 
gion essentially  consists.  Thus  the  startling  experience  is  ex- 
plained, that  those  most  sensitively  constituted,  and  most 
highly  developed  from  the  ethico-religious  point  of  view,  are 
most  disturbed  by  the  thought  of  their  own  wrongdoing.  To 
lack  this  form  of  consciousness  is,  indeed,  no  sign  of  ethical 
perfection,  but  the  reverse.  To  have  it  is  to  feel  the  spur 
which  drives  the  soul  toward  God  as  Redeemer  of  the  World. 

The  consciousness  of  sin  necessarily  results  in  a  conflict ; 
and  this  conflict  becomes  a  most  important  factor  in  the  de- 
velopment of  spirituality,  both  in  the  individual  and  in  the 
race.  Such  a  conflict,  wherever  the  race-culture  has  reached  a 
certain  stage,  is  characterized  by  the  three  following  marks : 

(1)  An  appreciation  of  the  supreme  value  of  rational  and 
ethical  will — or  spirit — in  the  World-order  and  in  human  life  ; 

(2)  an  increased  insight  into  the  nature  of  spiritual  ideals  and 


GOD  AS  REDEEMER  385 

of  the  means  for  their  more  effective  realization ;  and  (3)  a 
firmer  and  more  intelligent  purpose  to  achieve  these  ideals — 
both  in  one's  Self  and  in  Society, — or  the  determination  to  win 
at  whatever  cost,  the  good  of  spiritual  worth. 

Now  it  is  this  struggle  for  spirituality,  for  the  realization  of 
the  dawning  and  rising  ideal  of  union  with  God,  conceived  of 
as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  in  that  environment  which  man's  un- 
developed nature  and  the  seemingly  hostile  attitude  of  tlie 
pljysical  world  necessitate,  that  develops  the  conscious  need 
of  redemption.  This  conscious  need  is  at  first  vague  and  in- 
definite ;  but  in  its  higher  potency,  it  becomes  the  fixed  con- 
viction, based  upon  indubitable  experience,  that  man  cannot 
achieve  the  ideal  life,  or  even  make  satisfactory  progress  to- 
ward it,  without  divine  assistance.  The  liuman  soul,  aspiring 
and  struggling  to  become  spirit,  is  made  aware  of  that  highest 
of  all  the  forms  of  the  feeling  of  dependence,  in  which  so  much 
of  subjective  religion,  in  its  emotional  aspect,  essentially  con- 
sists. As  in  all  his  so-called  natural  life — organic  and  psychic 
— man  momentarily  depends  u^^on  the  One  Univei*sal  Life  in 
which  he  lives,  and  moves,  and  has  his  being,  so  does  his 
spiritual  life  recognize  a  yet  more  absolute  dependence  upon 
its  l)eing  and  movement  in  God,  the  perfect  Ethical  Spirit. 
This  conscious  need  of  God  as  Redeemer  is  an  historical  devel- 
opment ;  it  is  as  forceful  and  insistent  in  demanding  satisfac- 
tion for  itself  as  is  an}'  other  human  need.  Just  as  the  expe- 
rience of  need,  and  the  conflict  and  suffering  which  accompany 
this  experience  in  every  form,  has  resulted  in  the  economic, 
scientific,  artistic,  and  social  evolution  of  the  race;  so  has  this 
same  impulse  and  im})erative  demand,  in  tliis  its  most  pro- 
found and  supremely  importiint  form,  developed  the  religious 
conception  of  Divine  Redemption  in  a  way  1x38 1  to  satisfy  itself. 
Were  it  not  for  tiiis  result,  the  history  of  the  religious  life  of 
humanity  uj)  to  this  [)resent  time  would  Ihj  an  anomaly. 

A  certain  pessimistic  view  of  human  natun;  and  of  human 
life  is,  therefore,  essential  to  the  religious  doctrine  of  God  as 

25 


386  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Redeemer.  All  the  religions  of  salvation  cherish  this  truth  as 
something  fundamental  to  their  appeal  for  acceptance  and  for 
the  control  of  practice — especially,  the  greatest  of  them  all, 
Judaism,  Buddhism,  and  Christianity.  Scarcely  less  true  is 
this  of  the  Hindu  doctrine  of  Karma,  as  it  had  established 
itself  before  the  teaching  of  Gautama ;  and  also  as  it  con- 
tinued, after  his  teaching  had  suffered  a  relapse  in  this  respect.  ^ 
As  a  recent  writer  ^  has  said  :  ^'  John  and  Paul,  Augustine  and 
Pascal,  Innocent  III  and  Beeri,  as  well  as  Rousseau  and  Kant, 
are  in  this  sense  pessimists.^'  The  same  tiling  is  true  of  the  yet 
more  modern  thinkers,  John  Stuart  Mill,  Comte,  and  Nietzsche. 
Even  the  extremes  of  Schopenhauer  and  von  Hartmann,  in 
their  low  appreciation  of  man's  "native  ability"  to  improve 
himself  morally,  or  to  attain  his  ideal  of  happiness  by  success 
in  the  struggle  for  earthly  existence,  are  nearer  to  the  standard 
religious  view  than  is  much  of  the  current,  superficial,  and  un- 
intelligent so-called  '*  optimism."  Nothing  is  more  needed  at 
the  present  time,  in  order  to  counteract  the  dominant  tenden- 
cies, political,  social,  and  religious,  than  a  stronger  emphasis 
upon  the  powerlessness  of  all  sensuous,  and  even  aesthetical 
satisfactions,  to  lift  the  individual  and  the  race  to  the  blessed 
life.  In  this  way  a  religion,  tliat  is  somewhat  more  true  to  its 
own  inherent  convictions  and  to  its  mission  for  humanity, 
might  more  effectually  cure  the  unrest  of  soul  that  torments 
the  individual,  and  might  check  the  unholy  and  dangerous 
ambitions  of  "  that  recurrent  curse  of  the  world,  a  dominant 
race." 

Side  by  side  with  this  consciousness  of  need,  and  the  struggle 
for  spirituality  which  it  evokes,  but  also  complementary  to  it, 
there  has  gone  on  in  the  religious  history  of  humanity  a  devel- 
opment of  the  ethical  and  spiritual  conception  of  the  Divine  Be- 
ing. The  doctrine  of  God  as  Moral  Ruler  and  Divine  Re- 
deemer of  mankind  must  be  preceded  by,  and  founded  upon, 

1  See  Rhys  Davids,  Origin  and  Growth  of  Religion,  p.  86/. 

2  D.  H.  Schultz,  Grundriss  der  Christlichen  Apologetik,  p.  70. 


GOD  AS  REDEEMER  387 

a  confidence  in  the  good-will  and  friendship  of  the  gods  toward 
man.  As  we  have  already  seen,  this  usually  takes  one  of 
two  earliest  forms.  Either,  as  in  communities  where  the  more 
primitive  kind  of  social  constitution  prevails,  the  special  divin- 
ities of  the  tribe  or  clan  are  regarded  as  friendly  to  all  of  this, 
their  tribe  or  clan  ;  or  else,  as  in  communities  where  the  ruling 
and  priestly  classes  are  more  separate  from  the  people,  these 
classes  are  supposed  to  be  in  a  special  manner  the  friends  and 
beloved  of  the  gods.  In  Egypt,  for  example,  there  are  hun- 
dreds of  texts  in  which  the  Pharaoh  is  called  by  his  title,  the 
"  friend  of  tlie  gods  ;  "  or  the  gods  are  said  to  have  set  their 
son,  the  Pharaoh,  upon  the  throne. 

Another  allied  conception  plays  a  most  important  part  in  the 
development  of  the  doctrine  of  God  as  the  Redeemer.  This  is 
the  conception  of  mediation,  and  of  mediator,  between  the  di- 
vine beings  and  human  Ixiings.  Under  such  a  conception  may 
be  ranged  religious  developments  so  different  otherwise  as  the 
Eg^'ptian  or  Greek  belief  in  good  and  kindly  ministering 
daemons  and  the  Hebrew  doctrine  of  the  "  angel  of  Yahweh," 
or  the  Suffering  Messiah. 

In  Hesiod '  we  are  told  how, — 

"Thrice  ten  thousand  holy  Daemons  rove 
This  breatliing  world,  the  delegates  of  Jove, 
Guardians  of  man,  etc." 

In  Plutarch,'  Cleombrotus,  the  traveller,  asserts  that  the  ex- 
istence of  beings  with  a  nature  intermediate  between  that  of 
God  and  man  can  be  demonstrated  by  incontrovertible  evidence. 
Such  Ixiings  naturally  l>ecome  classified  into  the  good  and 
kindly  and  the  bad  and  harmful.  Thus  they  contribute  in  an 
important  but  temporary  manner  to  the  development  of  the  con- 
ception of  Deity  as  ethical  spirit,  by  relieving  him  of  the 
weight  of  responsibility  for  evil  ;  and  also  by  accentuating  the 

>  Works  and  Days,  Elton's  translation,  Specimens  of  the  Classic  Poeta,  I, 
p.  72. 
>De   Defect.   Orac,21. 


388  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

multiform  character  of  his  goodness.  The  bad  daemons  are 
made  "  scape-goat  for  everything  obscene,  cruel,  selfish,  tradi- 
tionally imputed  to  the  gods  ;  "  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
good  daemons  afford  great  satisfaction  to  one  in  whose  conscious- 
ness God  has  been  put  far  away,  without  removing,  however, 
the  craving  for  some  close,  intimate,  illumining  and  comfort- 
ing means  of  personal  intercourse.^  Thus  later  on  the  good 
daemons  may  easily  become  identified  with  the  gods  ;  and  the 
evil  daemons  sink  to  the  rank  of  malicious  spirits.  Some  of 
the  early  Christian  Fathers  identified  these  intermediary  spirits 
with  the  heathen  divinities.  But  a  higher  and  holier  truth 
gleamed  upon  the  world  in  the  Egyptian  myth  of  Isis,  who  is 
described  "  as  having  given  a  sacred  lesson  of  consolation  to 
men  and  women  involved  in  similar  sorrows."  The  same  thing 
is  true  of  the  conception  of  Ea  among  the  Babylonian  divin- 
ities ;  and  of  Prometheus  who,  among  the  Greeks,  was  pre- 
eminently the  suffering  friend  of  man. 

It  is,  however,  the  idea  of  a  divine  man,  who  acts  as  the  me- 
diator or  representative  of  God  among  his  fellows,  which  the 
religious  consciousness  has  seized  upon,  in  its  effort  to  make 
its  doctrine  of  redemption  more  comprehensive,  intimate,  and 
popularly  effective.  Sometimes  this  Mediator  is  a  king — God's 
vicegerent  upon  earth,  who  rules  in  righteousness,  but  who 
also  loves,  pities,  strives  and  even  suffers  for  his  people.  In 
such  cases  the  redemption  effected  is,  of  coui'se,  largely  a  rescue 
from  miseries  of  a  physical  or  social  kind.  Sometimes  it  is,  the 
rather,  a  priestly  mediator  who  has  special  favor  with  Deity, 
because  he  is  in  some  special  meaning  a  "  son  of  God ;  "  he,  there- 
fore, knows  how,  and  is  pitifully  willing,  to  propitiate  the  divine 
favor.  Sometimes,  again,  the  mediator  is  more  purely  a 
prophetic  leader,  who  has  attained  to  the  secrets  of  the  Divine 
Being  with  respect  to  the  way  of  salvation  in  general,  or  to 
some  particular  way  of  escape  in  an  emergency.  Yet,  again, 
the    mediator    may  be  regarded  as  the  very   incarnation  of 

1  On  this  whole  subject  see  Oakesmith,  The  Religion  of  Plutarch,  pp.  132^. 


GOD  AS  REDEEMER  389 

Deity  in  human  form.  God  himself  has  come  down  to  man,  in 
pity  and  in  love,  to  lift  man  up  to  God.  All  these  various 
forms  of  the  conception  of  God  as  man's  Redeemer  through 
some  kind  of  human  mediation  imply  the  belief  in  a  spiritual 
and  divine  nature  that  may  be  awakened  within  man.  The 
human  being  is  potentially  a  son  of  the  Divine  Being.  Every 
man  may  become  aware  of,  and  possessed  of,  his  spiritual  like- 
ness to  the  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  in  whom  the  faith  of  religion 
reposes  for  the  redemption  of  the  world. 

Thus  in  various  ways  the  different  religions  have  expressed 
their  felt  need  of  a  Mediator  who,  when  the  ethical  conception 
of  man's  relations  to  God  has  reached  its  higher  developments, 
must  also  be  conceived  of  as  a  Redeemer  from  misery  and  from 
sin.  And  if,  whether  under  tlie  influence  of  lingering  super- 
stitions, or  of  immature  philosophical  theories,  or  of  austere  theo- 
logical dogma,  the  Divine  Being  has  lost  touch  with  the  human 
heart  and  the  practical  interests  of  humanity,  then  the  office 
of  this  mediator  is  considered  to  be  juridical,  theatrical,  or  other- 
wise expressive  of  the  transcendent  nature  of  God.  As  says 
D'Alviella :  ^  "It  should  be  remarked  that,  almost  ever}'- 
where,  as  the  supreme  God  became  more  powerful  and  majestic, 
the  popular  conscience  had  spontaneously  fixed  upon  some 
other  divine  personage  nearer  to  its  own  sentiments,  aspira- 
tions, or  even  passions,  to  fulfil  the  function  of  interceder,  or 
rather  mediator,  between  man  and  the  Sovereign  of  the  skies." 
But  in  its  hifrhest  manifestations  reliofious  belief  attributes  to 
the  Divine  Being  the  realization  of  all  the  supremely  wortliy 
ideals  of  man,  in  tlie  Personal  Life  of  an  omnipotent,  omnipres- 
ent, and  onuiiscicnt,  perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  Thus  the  attri- 
butes, of  redeeming  pity  and  ethical  love  are  restored  to  God  ; 
and  God,  as  Himself  tlie  Redeemer,  is  made  innnanent  in  hu- 
man life  and  in  human  history. 

All  the  religions  of  salvation —and  all  the  greater  world- 
religions  are  religions  of  salvation — share  in  the  effort  to  satisfy 

1  Origin  and  Growth  of  the  Conception  of  God,  p.  229. 


390  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  needs  of  humanity  in  its  struggle  for  an  improved  spiritu- 
ality, and  for  a  better  standing  and  more  perfect  union  with 
God.  Germs  of  the  idea  of  a  helpful  and  even  a  self-sacrific- 
ing divine  work  in  the  behalf  of  humanity,  therefore,  exist  in 
all  such  religions.  Their  very  mission  is  to  hold  out  some 
hope  of  escape  through  divine  assistance  from  the  weaknesses, 
miseries,  and  sins  of  this  earthly  life.  Heaven  throws  some 
needed  light  upon  earth's  darkness — so  the  proclamation  of  reli- 
gious faith  is  ever  declaring  to  mankind.  Salvation  is  indeed 
the  end  which  all  those  religions  that  have  arisen  above  the 
lower  stages  of  egoism  and  superstition  propose  for  their  ad- 
herents. But,  from  7'eligion^s  point  of  view,  salvation  can  come 
only  through  redemption.  As  Eucken  points  out,  religion  al- 
ways has  its  negative  and  its  affirmative  side.  It  is  this  two- 
sidedness  of  Christianity — its  admission  of  the  reality  of  suffer- 
ing and  sin,  as  inherent  in  the  existence  of  the  individual  and 
of  the  race,  and  its  hope  of  relief,  individual  and  social,  by  the 
expansion  and  elevation  of  personal  life — which  constitutes  its 
chief  claim  to  superiority.^ 

In  the  remotest  antiquity  of  which  we  have  historical  wit- 
ness, cries  are  heard  appealing  to  Deity  for  succor  and  help, 
with  confidence  that  the  appeal  will  not  be  altogether  in  vain. 
Such  was  the  outbreathing  of  that  humble  soul  whose  prayer 
is  recorded  in  one  of  the  papyri  of  the  British  Museum  :  "  Oh  ! 
Amon,  lend  thine  ear  to  him  who  is  alone  before  the  tribunal ; 
he  is  poor.  The  court  oppresses  him.  .  .  .  My  Lord  is  my 
Defender.  .  .  .  There  is  none  mighty  except  him  alone." 
But  a  more  universal  doctrine  of  a  spiritual  redemption  of  the 
world  finds  also  a  place  in  the  religions  of  antiquity. 

The  Persian  Apocalyptic  proclaimed  the  belief  in  redemp' 

1  In  this  connection  all  that  was  formerly  said  (vol.  I,  chap.  XXII)  con- 
cerning the  "Way  of  Salvation"  must  be  recalled  and  supplemented — and 
perhaps,  in  certain  instances,  repeated — from  another  point  of  view.  For 
the  doctrine  of  the  path  which  man  should  follow  in  order  to  be  redeemed, 
and  the  article  of  faith  embodied  in  the  conception  of  God  as  the  Redeemer, 
are,  of  course,  interdependent. 


GOD  AS  REDEEMER  391 

tion  by  the  triumpli  of  Ahura-Mazda,  the  highest  God,  over 
the  bad  spirit,  Ahriman,  after  a  long  period  of  struggle.  At 
the  end  of  the  first  of  the  four  world-periods,  which  had  been 
an  unbroken  rule  of  evil,  arose  the  mediator,  Zaratliustra,  the 
first  of  the  world's  divinely  sent  rescuers.  But  his  work  only 
gave  a  temporary  check  to  the  power  of  evil.  At  the  last,  the 
final  redemption  of  the  world,  the  bringing  to  perfection  of  the 
work  of  rescue,  will  be  accomplislied  by  one  born  of  a  virgin, 
and  begotten  of  divine  seed  hidden  in  the  lake  in  which  she 
bathes ;  and  his  name  is  Saoshyas. 

The  Hindu  doctrine  as  to  the  way  and  end  of  salvation,  al- 
though it  nowhere  reaches  the  full  and  clear  conception  of  God 
as  the  Redeemer  of  mankind,  in  places  approaches  and  even 
coincides  with  the  Christian  doctrine.  In  the  ''  Divine  Song" 
(Bhagavadgita)  the  Deity  himself  informs  the  devout  knight 
Arjuna,  who  is  inquiring  as  to  ''  the  Way,"  that  salvation  is 
by  a  twofold  law.  The  Siinkhya  system  had  taught  that 
knowledge  is  salvation.  But  the  fuller  truth  about  the  divine 
way  adds  faith  to  knowledge.  Knowledge  of  God,  and  faith 
in  God,  are  the  appointed  means  of  redemption  from  the  weak- 
nesses, miseries,  and  sins  of  man's  mortal  existence.  Wisdom, 
implying  morality,  is  indeed  necessary ;  but  even  more  neces- 
sary is  faith.  Salvation  is  only  for  the  believer  that  is  wise, 
and  for  the  wise  man  that  believes.  This  way  of  faith  is  Yoga, 
or  serene  devotion,  "action-devotion," — the  "balanced  mind, 
that  is  free  from  all  attachments,  serene,  emancipated  from  de- 
sires, self-controlled,  and  perfectly  tranquil."  Renunciation 
without  Yoga  is  a  thing  hard  to  obtain  ;  but  renunciation,  whon 
united  with  Yoga,  receives  salvation  from  the  Divine  Being. 
The  soul  is  thus  redeemed  ;  for  its  salvation  is  secured  by  ab- 
sorption into  Deity.  Thns  he  who  perfects  liimself  in  tlie  dis- 
ci[)lirHi  of  Yoga  obtains  the  highest  bliss, — namelv,  Brahma. 
Tlie  follower  of  the  Yoga  path  of  salvation  "enters  "  lirahma'. 

'  That  the  more  precise  views  as  to  the  conditions  .ind  nature  of  Kedcmp- 
tion  (litTer  us  widely  in  modem  Hinduism  us  in  modern  Christianity,  the 


392  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

That  reform  of  Brahmanism,  which  was  chronologically  earl- 
ier than,  but  ethically  much  inferior  to,  Buddhism — the  doc- 
trine of  the  Jains — had  also  its  way  of  salvation.  According 
to  the  Yogacastra,  besides  the  practice  of  the  five-fold  conduct, 
(1)  non-injury,  (2)  kindness,  (3)  honorableness,  (4)  chastity, 
(5)  renunciation, — there  were  the  other  two  "gems"  which 
must  be  possessed  by  him  who  would  experience  the  divine 
redemption.  They  were  "  right  knowledge,"  or  the  possession 
of  the  truth  respecting  the  relations  of  spirit  and  non-spirit, 
and  "right  intuition,"  or  absolute  faith  in  the  word  of  the  mas- 
ter and  the  declarations  of  the  sacred  texts.  The  reality  of 
redemption  is  attained  by  escape  from  the  body  with  its  pas- 
sions, desires,  weaknesses,  and  sins. 

It  is  Buddhism,  however,  which  in  some  of  its  forms  has 
made  the  nearest  approaches  to  that  doctrine  of  salvation 
which,  upon  a  basis  of  Judaism,  has  brought  to  its  highest  ex- 
cellence and  practical  potency  the  conception  of  the  Divine 
Being  as  the  Redeemer  of  the  World.  But  this  Buddhistic 
doctrine,  in  its  latest  example,  is  far  enough  removed  from  the 
doctrine  of  Buddha,  the  one  chief  excellence  of  whose  teaching 
lay  in  its  leveling  or  democratic  character.  To  find  his  way 
to  Nirvana  the  plain  man  need  not  resort  to  the  Brahman  or 
the  sage.  "He  that  is  pure  in  heart  is  the  true  priest,  not  he 
that  knows  the  Vedas.  .  .  .  The  Vedas  are  nothing ;  the 
priests  are  of  no  account,  save  as  they  be  morally  of  repute." 
Again  :     "  What  use  to  mortify  the  flesh?     Be  pure,  be  good  ; 

world  over,  I  can  myself  bear  witness.  For  I  have  heard  the  Qankara-acaiya 
of  one  sect  (See  Journal  of  Am.  Oriental  Society,  xxii,  pp.  227-236),  in  a  dis- 
course following  a  ceremonial  designed  only  for  the  faithful,  proclaim  that 
absolute  and  unquestioning  acceptance  of  the  Vedic  scriptures,  as  interpreted 
by  the  Brahman,  is  the  only  way  of  salvation;  and  within  a  few  weeks  been 
told  in  private  conversation  with  no  less  an  authority  than  the  ''ascetic  Rajah 
of  Benares,"  that  most  of  these  scriptures  are  mere  "rubbish,"  interspersed 
with  "nuggets  of  gold,"  that  the  Brahmans  are  in  general  blind  leaders  of 
the  blind,  and  that  reflection,  prayer,  and  self-renunciation  constitute  the  only 
way  to  attain  the  redemption  which  is  Nirvana. 


GOD  AS  REDEEMER  393 

this  is  the  foundation  of  wisdom.  This  is  the  foundation  of 
wisdom — to  restrain  desire,  to  be  satisfied  with  little.  He  is  a 
holy  man  who  doeth  this."  "  Go  into  all  lands," — such  is  the 
tradition  as  to  the  parting  words  of  this  teacher  to  his  disciples 
— "  and  preach  the  gospel ;  tell  them  that  the  poor  and  lowly, 
the  rich  and  high,  all  are  one  ;  and  that  all  castes  unite  in 
this  religion,  as  unite  the  rivers  in  the  sea."  As  to  the  end  of 
salvation,  this  is  Nirvana,  the  release  from  Karma  or  the  end- 
less round  of  rebirtlis,  in  each  of  which  would  be  embodied,  as 
it  were,  the  punishment  for  all  the  indulgences,  weaknesses,  and 
sins,  of  the  previous  existence.  Doubtless,  as  says  Professor 
Hopkins,^  "  Nirvana  meant  to  Buddha  the  extinction  of  lust,  an- 
ger, and  ignorance  ;" — this  primarily ;  but  although  he  does 
not  seem  to  have  preached  it  as  an  essential  truth,  lie  probably 
in  his  own  mind  identified  Nirvana  with  the  extinction  of  all 
consciousness — with  annihilation. 

The  later  developments  of  the  Buddhistic  doctrine  of  the 
Divine  Being  as  the  Redeemer  of  the  World,  especially  in 
Japan,  have  gone  much  further  than  the  simple  and  chiefly 
negative  teachings  of  the  Founder.  Indeed  Hinduism,  Jain- 
ism,  and  early  Buddhism,  can  scarcely  be  said  to  liave  recog- 
nized in  any  clear  and  practically  helpful  way  the  doctrine  of 
God  tis  concerned  in  the  salvation  of  mankind.  For  them 
the  way  of  salvation  was  more  obviously  a  practice  of  aelf- 
redemption.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  the  tenet  of  the  necessity 
of  faith,  however  imperfectly  developed,  and  even  the  insis- 
tence upon  the  practice  of  Yoga  as  an  '*  action-devotion,"  were 
recognitions  of  the  great  truth  that  for  the  redemption  of  man 
there  is  necessary  on  his  part,  the  receptive  and  filial  attitude ; 
and  that  from  the  Divine  Being,  there  comes  an  immanent  spirit- 
ual influence  which  actually  accomplislies  a  moral  union  l)etween 
this  Being  and  humanity.  It  was  in  opj)()siti()n  to  the  doctrine 
of  salvation  by  following  the  eight-fold  path  of  primitive  lUid- 
dhiam,  ur  the  ceremonialism  and  IMiariseeism  of  India,  that  one 

>  Heli^iuns  of  India,  p.  321. 


394  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

of  the  Chinese  propagators  of  Jo-do  proclaimed  the  doctrine  of 
salvation  by  a  simple  faith  in  the  pitying  and  all-saving  power 
of  Araida — "the  personification  of  boundless  light."  Shinran 
(1173-1262  A.  D.),  the  founder  of  the  Shin  sect  in  Japan, 
taught  as  his  central  religious  idea,  that  man  is  to  be  saved  by 
faith  in  a  compassionate  Divine  Being,  vrho  pities  and  loves 
him  ;  and  not  by  works  or  vain  repetitions  in  prayer.  That  this 
faith  has  so  generally  degenerated  into  credulity,  and  has  thus 
become  powerless  as  an  ethically  purifying  and  inspiring  force, 
is  no  essentially  different  phenomenon  in  Japanese  Buddhism 
from  that  with  which  the  history  of  numerous  Christian  sects 
has  made  the  student  entirely  familiar.  In  general,  it  is  the 
most  lofty  and  inspiring  of  the  tenets  of  religion,  as  of  moral- 
ity and  of  art,  which  are  most  readily  misinterpreted  and 
practically  most  abused. 

The  doctrine  of  a  redeeming  God  developed  in  ancient 
Egypt  with  the  cult  of  Osiris.  The  myth  proclaimed  that  he 
was  indeed  a  son  of  the  gods,  but  he  came  to  earth  and  so- 
journed among  men  in  order  to  bring  to  them  the  blessings  of 
civilization.  By  the  devices  of  the  Wicked  One  he  was  slain  ; 
but  in  dying  Osiris  passed  into  the  other  world,  where  he  reigns 
over  the  dead  as  the  "  Good  Being."  Like  the  god,  every  man, 
no  matter  how  good  and  noble,  must  die  ;  but  the  good  deeds 
live  forever,  and  immortal  life  under  the  protection  of  this 
Divine  One  awaits  the  doer  beyond  the  tomb.  This  doctrine 
of  redemption  found  its  way  into  Greece  ;  and  there,  as  well  as 
in  Egypt  and  throughout  the  Roman  Empire,  it  prepared  the 
way  for  Christianity. 

From  the  sixth  century  B.  c.  onward  to  the  coming  of 
Christ,  the  joyous  Greek  nature,  which  had  been  without  abid- 
ing consciousness  of  sin,  had  been  toned  down  from  its  native 
high  pitch  of  sensuousness  ;  it  had  also  been  toned  up  ethically 
by  the  suffering  of  political  calamities,  and  by  the  teachings  of 
its  dramatists  and  philosophers.  The  gift-sacrifices  of  the  tra- 
ditional religion  no  longer  satisfied  those  profounder  ethico- 


GOD  AS  RKDEP:MER  395 

religious  ideas  and  feelings  which  had  now  become  somewhat 
popular.  The  tramp  "  purifiers  "  and  dispensers  of  valuable 
magic  rites  (^agyrtce)^  as  well  as  the  more  permanent  religious 
associations  (thiasi ;  and  orgeones^  had  aroused  a  demand  for 
deeper  spiritual  satisfaction.  What  has  been  called  that  "  wave 
of  revivalism  which  spread  from  the  Northern  Semites  over 
Hellas  "  had  resulted  in  expanding  and  deepening  the  religious 
experience  of  the  age.  This  took  the  form  of  a  more  impera- 
tive sense  of  need,  and  of  the  struggle  for  a  higher  spirituality 
which  inevitably  follows  the  feeling  of  this  need.  Love 
philtres,  fanatical  and  even  impure  rites  and  ceremonies,  were 
offered  to  meet  this  sense  of  need.  In  the  ancient  world  as  in 
the  modern  world,  in  so-called  heathenism  as  in  so-called  Chris- 
tianity, few  probably  pursued  righteousness  for  its  own  sake,  oi- 
inquired  the  way  of  salvation  with  an  unmixed  desire  for  an 
increased  freedom  from  sin  and  a  more  perfect  union  with 
God.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  words  of 
the  candidate  for  the  mystery  of  redemption  from  human  suf- 
fering, weakness,  and  sin,  when  he  rose  from  his  knees — '*  Bad 
have  I  escaped,  and  Ijetter  have  I  found," — were  sincerely 
uttered,  and  in  the  future  effectively  realized,  by  thousands  of 
souls.  For  tlie  Gra3co-Roman  world  was  awakening  to  the 
conscious  longing  for  redemption,  and  to  the  sense  of  the  value 
for  the  aspiring  spiritual  life  of  the  conception  of  God  as  tlie 
immanent,  all-pitiful,  and  all-saving  Redeemer. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  present  again  in  detail  the  conception 
of  Divine  Redemption  whicli  was  developed  by  Old-Testament 
Jndiiisiii.  In  the  Semitic  religions  generally,  the  Divine  Being 
was  regarded  as  interested  in  tlie  trials  and  distresses  of  liis 
faithful  followers  in  the  j)resent  life.  But  jus  the  grand  ethical 
ideals  of  .Judaism  emerged  and  became  dominant — first  in  the 
consciousness  of  the  prophetic  few,  and  then  in  the  national 
consciousness,  as  expresse<l  and  cultivated  by  its  sacred  writ- 
ings— a  more  distinctly  mor.il  and  widely  universal  concepLiou 
of  (iod   as   the  Redeemer  arose  and   prevailed.     To  the  liist, 


396  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

however,  the  conception  of  Judaism  was  national  rather  than 
individual,  political  rather  than  distinctly  spiritual.  The 
chosen  people  had  sinned  by  being  unfaithful  to  Yahweh ; 
their  weaknesses  and  miseries  were  the  righteous  punishment 
for  their  sins.  God  would  be  their  Redeemer  by  establishing 
them  anew,  whenever  they  became  convinced  by  the  words  of 
his  messengers  and  returned  to  their  allegiance  to  Him.  But  the 
need  of  a  promise  of  redemption  for  the  individual,  and  for  the 
departed  saints,  could  not  be  met  in  this  way. 

The  answer  which  sprang  from  the  consciousness  of  Jesus 
was  a  faith  in  God  as  the  Redeemer  of  every  individual  soul 
that  would  take  toward  God  the  attitude  of  piety ;  and  of  the 
race  through  the  continued  proclamation  and  growing  efficacy 
of  the  offer  of  redemption.  Thus,  as  we  have  already  said, 
the  whole  significance  of  the  religion  of  Christ  is  found  in  its 
doctrine  of  redemption. 

The  Christian  view  of  God  as  the  Redeemer  is  characterized 
especially  by  two  classes  of  conceptions,  or  groups  of  factors. 
One  of  these  concerns  the  unique  position  which  it  gives  to 
Christ  himself  as,  in  some  peculiar  meaning  of  the  word,  tlie 
Redeemer  of  mankind ;  the  other  is  the  completeness  of  the 
promised  redemption,  both  as  respects  its  moral  and  spiritual 
intensiveness  and  its  extension  over  humanity.  In  it  the  eyes 
are  focused  upon  the  historical  person  ;  but  from  this  center 
they  are  directed  abroad  over  the  whole  range  of  human  his- 
tory and  even  of  the  cosmic  evolutionary  process.  Jesus  is 
God's  appointed  Redeemer ;  but  his  redemption  is  thoroughly 
democratic. 

In  his  earlier  conceptions  of  his  mission  and  life-work, 
Jesus  definitively  and  unqualifiedly  locates  himself  in  the  his- 
torical Israel ;  his  work  is  related  to  the  divine  revelation  of 
redemption  as  made  in  the  sacred  writings  of  Israel.  He  has 
come  to  the  "  lost  sheep  "  of  this  house  ;  he  brings  bread  from 
God's  hand  to  "the  children."  He  is  the  fulfilment  of  the 
Law  and  of  Prophecy;  he  will  claim  nothing  for  himself  that 


GOD  AS  REDEEMER  397 

has  not  already  been  claimed  for  Messiah  by  the  prophets  be- 
fore him.  It  is,  however,  the  prophets  and  the  ethical,  rather 
than  the  legal  and  ceremonial,  contents  of  these  Scriptures, 
with  which  he  finds  himself  in  accord.  He  is  "  the  genial 
Restorer  of  the  true  content  of  Old-Testament  religion." 
Tliis  claim,  however,  has  its  negative  side.  Jesus  is  almost 
from  the  first  in  revolt  against  the  pharisaical  spirit  and  the 
minute  and  petty  discriminations  and  exactions  of  the  scribes. 
Their  pride  and  hatred  toward  other  peoples,  and  their  con- 
tempt for  the  great  body  of  Israel  who  were  not  learned  in  the 
law,  he  opposes  with  the  doctrine  of  faith  in  God's  fatherly 
love  and  care.  We  soon  begin  to  hear  the  voice  of  the  divine 
pity  and  desire  to  redeem,  for  all  the  "  wandering  sheep  "  and 
"  tlie  sheep  of  other  folds." 

A  more  exalted  and  comprehensive  conception  of  his  office 
and  work  belongs  to  the  later  and  latest  period  of  the  ministry 
of  Jesus.  He  appears  to  regard  liimself  as  no  longer  merely 
a  prophet  of  Israel,  but  a  King  in  the  Kingdom  of  Redemption  ; 
"no  longer  merely  subject  of  religion,  but  its  Object."  This 
conviction  was  not  with  him  a  theological  proposition,  but  an 
expression  of  liis  inner  consciousness  of  communion  with 
God.  It  is  especially  as  "  Son  of  Man,"  in  the  Messianic 
sense,  that  Jesus  claims  preeminence  for  his  personality.*  At 
the  end  of  his  life,  the  religious  instructions,  exhortations, 
and  promises  which  constitute  his  doctrine  of  redemption  may 
be  summed  up  in  the  word  '*  Gospel."  In  the  religion  of 
Christ  this  doctrine  takes  to  itself  the  marks  of  a  true  and 
complete  universality.     Upon  the  content  of  the  word  a  mod- 

*  In  .spite  of  the  objections  which  have  been  made  to  Jesus'  uae  of  this 
title,  and  to  his  acceptance  of  the  prevailinR  Ap<H*nly|)tical  conception  of  Mes- 
siah for  himself,  it  is  difhcult  to  intcrprt^t  the  Ciosjh'Is  and  the  earlier  Apos- 
tolic writini^s  fairly  without  admitting  somethin;;  of  the  kind.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  cons<MousneHs  of  sonship,  and  of  his  mission  to  lead  m.any  into  this 
relation  of  sonship  with  (iod,  is  much  the  most  essential  thing  about  Jesus' 
claims  to  be  a  Divine  Iledeemer. 


898  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ern  student  ^  of  unquestioned  authority  makes  these  observa- 
tions :  "  The  Gospel,  which  appears  in  these  three  elements, 
the  dominion  of  God,  a  better  righteousness  embodied  in  the 
law  of  love,  and  the  forgiveness  of  sin,  is  inseparably  connected 
with  Jesus  Christ ;  for  in  preaching  this  gospel  Jesus  Christ 
everywhere  calls  men  to  himself.  In  him  the  Gospel  is  word 
and  deed ;  it  has  become  his  food,  and  therefore  his  personal 
life ;  and  into  this  life  he  draws  all  others.  He  is  the  son 
who  knows  the  Father.  In  him  men  are  to  perceive  the  kind- 
ness of  the  Lord ;  in  him  they  are  to  feel  God's  power  and 
government  of  the  world,  and  to  become  certain  of  this  consola- 
tion ;  they  are  to  follow  him,  the  meek  and  lowly,  and  while 
he,  the  pure  and  holy  one,  calls  sinners  to  himself,  they  are 
to  receive  the  assurance  that  God  through  him  forgiveth  sin." 

It  is  an  integral  part  of  this  Gospel  of  Redeeming  Love  that 
the  death  of  Jesus  had  significance  in  his  own  thought.  It 
was  the  death  of  the  shepherd  in  behalf  of  the  sheep.  He 
makes  himself  a  voluntary  offering  for  his  own  ;  and  this  end 
of  his  life  is  according  to  the  will  of  his  Father  concerning 
him.  The  rescuing  love  of  God  is  thus  expressed  ;  the  revela- 
tion of  the  divine  grace  is  thus  accomplished ;  his  life-work 
and  Messianic  office  are  thus  finished  and  given  completion. 

From  the  purely  historical  point  of  view  the  death  of  Jesus 
was  an  event  of  little  significance.  He  had  scarcely  become 
the  object  of  attention  and  interest  to  any  considerable  number 
of  people,  when  he  perished,  leaving  behind  a  handful  of  in- 
significant followers.  Nor  was  there  anything  about  the  man- 
ner of  his  death  to  excite  the  popular  feeling ;  it  was  not 
through  the  fear  or  ill-will  of  the  hated  Roman  government, 
or  the  hostile  persecution  of  the  Jewish  public;  it  was  due  to 
his  having  incurred  the  enmity  of  a  small  party  of  priests  and 
Pharisees.  At  first,  this  event  seemed  to  his  few  disciples  to 
put  an  end  to  their  hopes  for  the  redemption  of  Israel,  and  for 
the  establishment  of  the  divine  government  in  the  world  upoD 
1  See  Hamack,  History  of  Dogma,  I,  p.  59/ 


GOD  AS  REDEEMER  399 

a  new  and  more  favorable  basis.  This,  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that,  at  least  in  the  latest  days  of  his  ministry,  Jesus  had  him- 
self become  aware  that  his  death  was  inevitable ;  and  had 
taught  that  it  was  a  most  important  factor  in  the  plan  of  God 
his  Father  for  the  redemption  of  mankind.  In  proof  of  this 
teaching  appeal  may  be  made  to  the  institution  of  the  memorial 
supper  ;  to  the  agony  and  prayer  in  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane  ; 
and  to  his  complaints  that  his  disciples  did  not  comprehend  the 
true  nature  of  his  kingdom,  or  the  way  in  which  his  salvation 
was  to  be  established.  "  If,"  as  says  the  authority  already 
several  times  quoted,'  "we  also  consider  that  Jesus  himself 
described  his  death  as  a  service  wliich  he  was  rendering  to 
many,  and  that  by  a  solemn  act  he  instituted  a  lasting  remem- 
brance of  it  ...  .  we  can  understand  how  this  death  and  the 
shame  of  the  cross  were  bound  to  take  the  central  place." 

The  significance  of  this  event  respecting  the  truth  of  God  as 
the  Redeemer  of  mankind  comprises,  therefore,  tliese  three 
principal  elements  :  (1)  The  death  of  Jesus  is  an  example  of 
self-sacrificing  service,  which  has  the  divine  authority  and  tip- 
proval  to  commend  it,  and  which  has  reached  the  furtherest 
possible  limit ;  (2)  it  is  a  victory  which,  when  followed  by  the 
belief  in  his  resurrection,  awakens  in  his  foUowei-s  the  convic- 
tion that  God  is  with  man,  as  Lord  of  life  and  ^loml  Ruler  of 
the  living  and  the  dead ;  and  (3)  it  is  somehow,  by  this  supreme 
self-sacrifice  that  the  deliverance  of  man  from  sin  and  death  is 
to  be  accomplislied, — and  this,  for  all  mankind  who  will  follow 
in  the  "  way  of  Jesus." 

As  to  how  the  death  of  Jesus  operates  to  complete  the  work 
of  redemption  to  which  he  gave  himself,  or  becomes  a  central, 
efficient  factor  in  this  work,  the  Apostles  and  other  writers  of 
the  New  Testiiment  do  not  make  clear.  Theories  of  the  atone- 
ment and  of  the  person  of  Christ  followed,  iis  soon  iis  reflection 
Ix'gan  its  work  upon  the  facts  of  Christian  experience,  and  as 
a  matter  of  coui-sc  ;  their  history   is  an  essential  part  of  tho 

*  iiaroack,  What  is  Christianity?  p.  172. 


400  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

history  of  Christian  dogma.  Nor  can  it  be  denied  that  the  ef- 
forts to  throw  light  upon  this  problem  have  been  significant 
and  potent  factors  in  tlie  philosophy  of  religion  as  cultivated 
by  the  modern  Christian  world.  But  almost  from  the  first 
there  were  different  conceptions  as  to  the  ontological  relations 
of  the  man  Jesus  to  the  Divine  Being ;  and,  also,  as  to  the 
value  of  the  death  of  Jesus  in  securing  the  redemption  of  man- 
kind. That  he  was  in  a  unique  sense  "  Son  of  God "  and 
divinely  appointed  Messiah,  and  that  his  death  has  somehow  a 
saving  value,  all  the  writings  of  the  New  Testament,  including 
those  of  Paul,  the  Johannine,  First  Peter,  Hebrews,  and  the 
Apocalypse,  are  agreed.  But  no  theory,  whether  formed  in  a 
germinal  way  in  these  writings  or  developed  later  by  schools 
of  Christian  philosophy  and  theology,  can  confidently  appeal 
to  the  authority  of  Jesus  himself.  They  must  all,  so  to  say, 
stand  upon  their  own  merits,  and  be  subjected  to  the  tests  of 
experience  as  undergoing  an  historical  development.  This 
development,  itself,  when  regarded  from  the  Christian  point 
of  view, — a  point  of  view  identical  with  that  taken  by  Christ 
himself, — is  nothing  else  than  the  progressive  realization  of  the 
work  of  God  as  an  immanent  Divine  Redeemer.  In  its  totality, 
the  work  is  equivalent  to  the  establishment  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God  among,  and  over,  mankind.  The  tendency,  which  has 
often  prevailed  and  still  prevails,  to  separate  the  death  of 
Jesus  from  his  personality  and  work,  and  to  make  a  theory  of 
its  modus  operandi  the  essential  tenet  in  Christian  faith,  incurs 
the  risk  of  a  mischievous  mistake.  His  death  cannot  be  ap- 
preciated properly  except  in  indissoluble  connection,  both  histor- 
ical and  doctrinal,  with  the  totality  of  that  work.  And  the 
totality  of  that  work  can  be  appreciated  properly — not  to  say, 
wholly  comprehended — only  when  the  testimony  of  the  experi- 
ence of  his  individual  followers  and  of  the  race,  as  affected  by 
that  work,  has  been  called  to  our  aid.  In  this  experience,  if  any- 
where, must  the  proof  of  the  Christian  conception  of  God  as 
the  Redeemer  of  the  World  be  found. 


GOD  AS  REDEEMER  401 

When  raising  the  question  of  evidence  for  the  religious  con- 
ception of  God  as  the  Redeemer  of  mankind,  it  must  be  re- 
membered in  what  sense  only  ''  proof  "  is  possible  in  such  a 
case.  In  general,  it  may  be  said,  tlien,  that  the  only  evidence 
for  this  conception  must  be  given  in  the  actual  experience  of 
redemption.  There  are,  indeed,  obscure  intimations,  vague 
liints,  and  even  impressive  anticipations,  of  such  a  truth  in  that 
behavior  of  the  cosmic  forces,  and  that  course  of  the  cosmic 
processes,  with  which  the  physico-chemical  sciences  have  to 
deal.  Certain  remedial  agencies,  and  even  certain  quasi-re- 
deeming  operations,  of  so-called  Nature  may  be  pointed  out. 
But  these  evidences  are  quite  balanced,  if  not  overwhelmed, 
by  considerations  which  would  lead  the  candid  observer  of 
nature's  way  of  dealing  with  human  weaknesses  and  human 
sins,  away  from  rather  than  toward  a  confidence  in  the  divine 
redemptive  processes.  The  evidence  of  evolution  is,  indeed, 
on  the  whole — though  by  no  means  so  conclusively  as  is  cus- 
tomarily claimed — in  favor  of  a  reasonable  belief  in  the  con- 
tinued Ijetterment  of  the  race.  But  betterment,  especially  of 
the  form  sought  by  an  age  that  is  extraordinarily  greedy  of 
gain  in  wealth,  political  power,  and  the  prestige  of  empire,  and 
which  is  relatively  indifferent  to  the  highest  ethical  and  reli- 
gious ideals,  is  not  ''  Redemption  "  in  the  meaning  in  which 
Christ  and  the  other  great  leaders  and  reformers  of  religion 
have  used  this  sacred  term.  For  the  Christian  Church  now  to 
renew  the  claim  of  Augustine  that  its  borders  are  inclusive  of 
the  Kingdom  of  Redemption  is  to  excite  the  ridicule  and  scorn 
of  intelligent  minds.  And  the  moment  that  the  evolutionary 
process  itself  is  converted  into  a  pjtnli/  mechanical  or  biologi- 
cal affair,  it  is  separated  from  the  ideal  beliefs  and  sentiments 
which  give  it  force  ;  and  it  then  loses  all  resemUance  to  a  truly 
redemptive  process. 

If  we  could  distinguish  the  redeeming  forces  in  the  iiiiitory 
of  the  race  whicli  are  not  "  natural,"  in  the  more  restricted 
meaning  of  the  term,  from  the  delinitively  religious  life   and 

26 


402  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

development  of  humanity,  we  should  find  that  they  afford  only 
very  doubtful  evidence  for  the  conception  of  God  as  the  Re- 
deemer. In  a  word,  it  is  in  religious  experience  itself  that  our 
confidence  in  the  divine  redemptive  wisdom  and  goodness  has 
its  roots,  its  evidence,  and  its  hope  of  attaining  its  end.  The 
very  conception  of  Redemption  is  supremely  a  religious  concep- 
tion ;  its  proof  is  therefore  necessarily  to  be  found  in  religious 
experience.  In  interpreting  this  experience,  however,  our 
notions  of  religion  must  emphasize  the  intimate  and  compre- 
hensive relations  which  its  beliefs  and  sentiments  sustain  to 
the  whole  life  and  progress  of  humanity.  Tlie  self-sacrificing 
services  of  all  the  good,  in  every  grade  of  society  and  of  every 
people,  may  undoubtedly  be  regarded  as  contributions  to  this 
one,  great  divine  work  of  relieving  man  from  his  condition  of 
weakness,  misery,  and  sin.  But  these  services,  too,  in  order 
to  be  interpreted  as  "  moments,"  or  factors,  in  this  work  must 
take  their  proper  place  in  tlie  history  of  humanity.  It  is,  then, 
in  the  total  experience  of  humanity,  when  regarded  from  the 
religious  point  of  view,  that  our  proof  of  the  doctrine  must 
be  sought  for,  and  found,  if  found  at  all. 

The  conception  of  God  as  the  Redeemer  of  mankind  reaches 
its  highest  form  in  Christianity  ;  and  by  "  highest  form  "  must 
be  understood  the  form  that  is  most  intimate,  most  effective, 
most  comprehensive,  and  most  rational.  To  establish  its  inti- 
macy an  appeal  to  the  experience  of  the  Christian  believer  is 
the  only  available  or  conceivable  proof ;  for  this  quality  is  ex- 
pressed in  the  subjective  attitude  of  the  personal  conscious- 
ness toward  its  own  weaknesses,  miseries,  and  sins.  To  feel 
relief  from  these  is  to  be,  so  far  forth,  here  and  now  redeemed. 
From  the  individual's  point  of  view,  the  redemption  is  the 
relief.  The  efficiency  of  the  redemption  offered  and  furnished 
by  Christianity  may  also  be  in  a  measure  shown  historically ; 
for  an  appeal  may  be  made  to  the  fact  that  the  religion  of 
Christ  evinces  its  own  essential  being  in  diminishing,  as  judged 
by  all  the  objective  signs,  the  amount  of  human  misery  and 


GOD  AS  REDEEMER  403 

sin.  In  similar  manner,  the  comprehensive  character  of  the 
redemptive  process  is  shown  both  by  the  essential  content  of 
Christian  trutli,  with  its  democratic  offer  of  salvation,  and  by 
its  actual  entrance  into  the  life  of  humanity,  as  a  redeeming 
force,  irrespective  of  differences  of  race,  of  social  condition, 
of  stages  of  culture,  or  even,  in  a  marvelous  way,  of  previous 
moral  condition.  And,  finally,  it  is  the  work  of  Christian 
apologetics,  in  the  broadest  meaning  of  this  study,  to  show 
the  rationality  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  God  as  the  Re- 
deemer. 

In  order  to  maintain  this  last  contention,  however,  it  is  nec- 
essary for  the  apologist  constantly  to  distinguish  between  the 
essential  content  of  truth  as  it  was  given  to  the  world  in  the 
person  and  work  of  Jesus,  and  all  the  theological  or  philosophi- 
cal accretions  which  have  been,  or  may  be,  mingled  with  this 
content.  Tlie  truth  of  this  content  is  contiiined  in  the  faith 
of  the  Christian  that  the  redeeming  grace  of  God,  meeting  in 
life  with  man's  need  of  redemption,  is  realizable  by  every  man; 
and  in  the  experience  which  is  the  concrete  realization  of  this 
faith.  Thus,  for  the  individual,  when  he  has  experienced  tlie 
consciousness  of  sin  and  of  the  need  which  is  a  part  of  this  con- 
sciousness, and  has  entered  upon  the  struggle  for  spirituality 
that  naturally  follows,  tlie  Christian  resolution  of  this  conscious- 
ness is  essentially  subjective  religion  itself.  It  is  the  rational 
attitude  of  a  finite  spirit,  wlien  recognizing  its  own  weaknesses, 
miseries,  and  sins,  toward  that  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  wliich  con- 
stitutes the  Object  of  religious  faith.  This  is  not  religion  for 
angels,  or  for  perfected  finite  spirits,  if  such  spirits  exist.  It 
is  religion  for  man,  when  man  comes  to  know  himself  from  the 
higher  spiritual  point  of  view. 

In  order,  Ijowever,  to  maintain  that  the  Christian  experience 
of  redeniption  ills  the  universal  need  of  liumanity  for  tliat  de- 
pendent manifestation  of  God's  prcsenco  in  the  worhl  wliich  is 
emb()(li<'d  in  the  conception  of  (Jod  ;us  tiie  Redeemer,  allowance 
must  be  made  for  all  the  differentiations  which  rharacterize  the 


404  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

individuality  of  religion,^  and  for  disregarding  the  admixtures 
and  idiosyncrasies  that  characterize  these  individual  experi- 
ences and  the  various  so-called  "  types  "  of  religious  subjec- 
tivity. The  redemptive  work  of  the  Divine  Being  is  as  mys- 
teriously varied,  and  at  the  same  time  universal,  as  any  other 
form  of  his  work. 

Moreover,  the  divine  work  with  the  race  is  an  historical  proc- 
ess. The  history  of  religions  shows  how  man's  dissatisfaction 
with  his  own  relation  to  God,  his  dawning  and  deepening  con- 
sciousness of  weakness  and  sinfulness,  and  his  consequent 
struggle  to  realize  his  own  ideal  of  spiritual  being,  are  essen- 
tial factors  in  the  religious  development  of  the  race.  So,  too, 
is  the  rising  faith  of  humanity  in  God  as  Ethical  Spirit,  pitiful 
and  gracious  Father,  and  willing  to  redeem,  an  historical  de- 
velopment. The  various  mediators,  or  assistants,  in  the  divine 
manifestation — royal,  priestly,  prophetic,  or  political — have 
been  appointed,  equipped,  and  located  in  humanity,  as  historical 
characters.  The  preparation  for  him  who  was  to  be  called, 
above  others,  the  Redeemer,  was  an  historical  process.  Jesus 
was  essentially,  not  a  speculative  construction  or  a  mythical 
idea,  but  an  historical  personality.  What  has  gone  on  since  his 
appearance,  by  way  of  realizing  the  ideals  concretely  presented 
in  his  person  and  work,  lies  before  the  student  of  Christianity 
chiefly  in  the  form  of  historical  facts. 

The  evidence  for,  or  testimony  to  the  ontological  value  of, 
the  conception  of  God  as  the  Redeemer,  has,  therefore,  two 
sources  of  experience,  which  are  really  onl}^  two  ways  of  ex- 
pressing the  one  source.  This  one  source  is  the  totality  of 
human  religious  experience,  as  that  of  a  race  developing  under 
conditions  which  somehow  make  necessary  the  divine  work  of 
redemption,  and  which  show  this  needed  divine  work  actually 
in  progress  toward  its  own  realization  in  the  perfected  spirit- 
uality of  the  race.  But  this  experience  may  be  considered  by 
the  philosophy  of  religion  in  two  ways  : — either  as  it  is  felt  by 

1  Comp.  Vol.  I,  chap.  XXIV. 


GOD  AS  REDEEMER  405 

the  individual  consciousness  and  observed  by  those  who  note 
the  conduct  of  the  individual ;  or  else  as  it  manifests  itself  and 
its  products  in  the  larger,  but  more  obscure  and  doubtful,  fields 
of  the  history  of  humanity.  In  both  tliese  ways,  while  the  ac- 
tivities and  achievements  of  all  the  greater  world-religions 
should  be  gratefully  acknowledged,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
the  religion  of  Christ  exceeds  them  all  in  the  character  of  its 
doctrine  of  redemption  and  in  the  results  of  the  redeemed  life. 

For  the  individual,  tlierefore,  the  proof  of  the  doctrine  of  re- 
demption must  always  continue  to  be  chiefly  his  own  experi- 
ence of  religion  as  the  power  of  a  new  life.  The  earliest  form 
of  tlie  Christian  experience  attached  itself  directly  to  the  per- 
sonal presence  of  Jesus.  They  who  saw  and  heard  him,  and 
who  then  believingly  followed  him,  actually  experienced  a  new 
life.  On  this  account,  they  regai'ded  Jesus  as  the  Savior  and 
Lord  of  the  individual  soul.  But  after  death  removed  his  per- 
sonal presence  from  them,  they  still  regarded  him  as  the  source 
of  a  vivifying  spiritual  influence — the  source  of  life,  a  life- 
imparting  Spiiit,  for  his  disciples.  Thus,  as  says  Ilarnack,^ 
"  the  characteristic  feature  of  the  primitive  community  is,  that 
every  individual  in  it,  even  the  very  slaves,  possesses  a  living 
experience  of  God."  This  life,  however,  was  never,  from  the 
very  first,  an  exclusive  devotion  to  the  traditional  words  of 
Jesus,  or  a  punctilious  imitation  of  his  life,  or  even  a  slavish 
submission  to  his  thoughts  and  his  will, — nmch  less  to  the 
teachings  and  injunctions  of  his  chosen  Apostles.  It  was,  the 
rather,  a  free  working  of  the  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  transform- 
ing the  weak  and  sinful  finite  spirit  into  likeness  to  itself. 
"This  mutual  union  of  a  full,  olx^'dient,  subjection  to  the  Lord 
with  freedom  in  the  Spirit  is  tiie  most  important  feature  in  the 
distinctive  character  of  tliis  religion,  and  the  seal  of  its  great- 
ness." 

Hut  like  every  powerful  vital  influence,  and  especially  like 
every  powerful   religious   innucncf,   the  redeemed  life  of  the 

«  What  is  Christianity?  p.  177/. 


406  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Christian  is  a  social  affair.  It  is  the  power  to  live  one's  own 
life  with,  and  for,  others  in  a  new  and  higher  form  of  the  so- 
cial relation.  Thus  this  spirit  was  destined  to  effect  a  re- 
demption in  the  life  of  the  community  of  believers.  It  must 
penetrate  the  entire  body  and  weld  them  together,  as  it  were, 
in  holy  living — in  purity  and  brotherly  fellowship.  We  have 
seen  how  the  idea  of  purification,  as  somehow  essential  for  the 
proper  religious  life,  is  nearly  as  old  and  as  universal  as  religion 
itself.  In  the  later  period  of  the  Greek  religion,  participation 
in  the  mysteries  required  a  laver  of  regeneration  followed  by  a 
sacrifice  of  salvation.  So  Christian  baptism  properly  stood  at 
the  entrance  to  an  enjoyment  of  the  purifying  influence  of  this 
life.  But  baptism,  and  all  other  ceremonial  observances,  were 
of  small  importance  compared  with  that  experience  of  transfor- 
mation in  the  whole  temper  and  mind  in  which  reposed  the 
faith  in  God  as  the  Redeemer  of  the  human  soul. 

Yet  this  new  life,  although  it  had  all  the  fullness  and  ex- 
uberance of  the  Spirit,  was  also  a  very  sober  practical  sort. 
There  are  traces,  indeed,  of  excesses  breaking  out  among  the 
early  Christians  ;  and  numerous  excesses  constantly  show 
themselves  in  connection  with  the  Christian  life  during  the 
centuries  of  Church  history.  But  to  correct  or  repress  such 
exhibition  accords  with  the  real  and  essential  spirit  of  the 
Christian  life.  At  present,  however,  the  conception  of  God  as 
the  Redeemer  of  the  World  by  the  work  of  the  Spirit  that  was 
immanent  in  Christ  has  issued  in  rather  shallow  notions  of  a 
semi-socialistic  order ;  or  in  confidence  in  the  so-called  laws  of 
economics  and  sociology  ;  rather  than  in  a  just  valuation  of 
those  forces  and  ideals  which  are  more  independent  of  the  ex- 
ternals and  superficies  of  social  and  economic  conditions. 

And,  finally,  the  work  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ  in  the  human 
soul,  which  begins  by  finding  its  entrance  through  faith,  and 
by  effecting  subjective  reconciliation  and  the  assurance  of  re- 
lief from  human  weaknesses,  miseries,  and  sins,  as  the  indwell- 
ing spiritual  force  of  a  new  life,  ends  in  the  conferring  of  ira- 


GOD  AS  REDEEMER  407 

mortality,  or  tlie  eternal  and  blessed  existence  in  union  with 
God  and  liis  redeemed  ones.  Completed  salvation,  or  the  goal 
and  end  of  redemption,  is  then  for  the  individual,  not  so-called 
"natural"  immortality,  happily  circumstanced,  as  believed  in 
by  the  savage  or  by  the  modern  Christian  theologian  ;  nor  is  it 
Hindu  absorption  into  Deity,  or  Buddhistic  Nirvana,  or  the 
Paradise  of  Islam.  It  is,  the  rather,  a  complete  ethical  corre- 
spondence, or  liabitual  voluntary  response,  of  the  human  will  to 
the  Divine  Will ;  it  is  the  reception  into  the  human  spirit  of 
the  fullness  of  the  Divine  Spirit.  In  this  meaning  of  the  words, 
union  with  God  is  redemption,  the  ideal  consummation  of  re- 
ligion. 

It  is  matter  of  historical  fact  that  the  experience  of  redemp- 
tion, and  the  confident  belief  in  God  as  the  Redeemer  through 
his  immanence  in  humanity  as  specialized,  so  to  say,  in  Jesus 
Christ,  became  a  most  potent  factor  in  the  regeneration  of  the 
ancient  world.  The  vitalizing  power  of  Christianity,  as  the 
experience  of  subjective  redemption  and  as  the  confident  liope 
in  the  success  of  the  divine  process  of  redeeming  society,  wrought 
everywhere  important  changes  in  the  moral  impulses  and  prac- 
tices of  men.  In  spite  of  the  poverty,  lowness  of  estate,  and 
frequent  and  bitter  persecutions  of  its  believers  the  vitality  of 
their  experience  as  a  force  propagated  in  society,  is  the  note- 
worthy feature  of  early  Christianity.  It  operated  like  the  in- 
troduction of  new  life-blood  into  the  social  and  political  body. 
And  this  continued  to  be  true  for  centuries,  in  spite  of  the  al- 
terations, and  in  some  importiint  respects,  deteriorations,  which 
the  later  social  and  political  prestige  of  this  religion  brought 
al)Out. 

'i'he  l>est  philosophical  results  of  the  doctrine  of  Redemption 
were  undoubtedly,  in  the  earlier  centuries  of  the  Christian 
Church,  developed  by  the  application  of  the  prevailing  Ilellen- 
izing  s[)irits  to  the  fact  and  truths  of  historical  Christianity. 
On  the  oiK?  Iiand,  llu^sc  results  cannot  l)e  identified  tus  a  whole, 
or  by  selecting  any  one  of  the  proininLMit  theories  thus  developed, 


408  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

with  the  essential  and  unchanging  features  of  the  ontolcgically 
valid  conception  of  God  as  the  Redeemer  of  mankind.  On  the 
other  hand,  they  cannot  be  rejected  as  unworthy  of  considera- 
tion, or  as  wholly  unessential  accretions  about  the  true  content 
of  this  conception.  Like  all  developments  of  religious  beliefs 
and  sentiments, — and,  indeed,  like  all  human  opinions  and  con- 
clusions based  in  a  similar  way  upon  special  aspects,  or  classes, 
of  experiences, — they,  too,  must  be  judged  by  the  evidence  ap- 
propriate to  their  case.  Of  this,  however,  there  can  be  little 
doubt :  The  construction  of  dogma,  as  it  took  place  in  the  form 
adopted  by  the  early  Church  Catholic,  and  still  later  in  the 
form  of  the  revived  Paulinism  of  the  Augustinian  theology, 
was  the  liveliest  movement  in  philosophy  belonging  to  those 
centuries.  And  the  religious  organization  which  it  produced, 
in  order  that  the  Christian  Church  might  step  into  the  place 
then  being  vacated  by  the  decline  of  the  Roman  Empire,  was 
the  most  powerful  of  all  the  political  constructive  movements 
of  the  same  centuries.  These  philosophical  results  were  con- 
tinued and  developed  yet  further  by  the  Mediaeval  theologians  ; 
but  even  more  fruitfully  by  the  later  Christian  Mystics.  At 
the  present  time  they  are  being  quite  properly  subjected  to  the 
reflections  of  the  reigning  philosophical  Idealism,  upon  the 
basis  of  Christian  experience  and  of  the  history  of  the  Christian 
development.  The  real  problem  involved,  when  fundamentally 
considered,  is  this:  How  shall  we  truly  conceive  of  those 
spiritual  relations  and  activities  which  exist  between  the 
Personal  Absolute,  who  is  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  and  the  finite 
spirit  of  man,  taken  as  he  is,  in  all  his  weakness,  misery,  and 
sinfulness,  so  as  to  explain,  his  experience  of  redemption,  and 
so  as  to  realize  progressively  his  ideals  of  the  redeemed  life  ? 

The  profound  and  far-reaching  problem  which  the  philosophy 
of  religion  raises  in  the  form  just  announced,  the  experience  of 
religion  answers  in  a  more  concrete  and  practical  way.  The 
special  answer  of  Christian  faith  is  its  doctrine  of  redemption 
through  the  divine  immanence  in  humanity,  as  revealed  in  the 


GOD  AS  REDEEMER  409 

person,  work,  and  abiding  spiritual  influence  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Proof  of  the  truth  of  religion's  answer,  in  the  stricter  meaning 
of  the  words,  can  come  only  in,  and  througli,  the  effective 
working  and  final  triumph  of  the  experience  itself.  Is  God, 
indeed,  the  Redeemer,  by  a  spiritual  and  yet  historical  process, 
of  the  race  of  man  ?  The  individual  who  has  the  experience, 
may  reply  for  himself.  The  observer,  who  notes  the  facts  of 
history  and  reasons  profoundly  in  their  explanation,  may  be 
reasonably  confident  of  an  affirmative  answer.  But  the  final 
and  conclusive  proof  is  the  completion  of  the  process.  Thus  the 
conception  of  God  as  the  Redeemer  becomes  connected  with, 
and  merged  in,  the  conception  of  the  Kingdom  of  Redemption ; 
and  this  implies  the  actual  triumph  in  the  history  of  the  race, 
of  the  most  comprehensive  and  exalted  of  human  ethico-religious 
and  social  ideals. 


CHAPTER  XLII 

REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION 

It  has  been  the  belief  of  man's  religious  experience,  in  all 
stages  and  forms  of  its  expression  and  development,  that  the 
gods  somehow  make  themselves  known  to  man ;  and  also  that 
the  invisible,  superhuman  spirits  exercise  some  hidden  influence 
upon  the  spirits  of  visible,  human  beings.  It  may  be  said,  then, 
that  the  conceptions  of  revelation  and  inspiration  are  essential, 
in  order  to  account  for  the  experience  of  religion,  when  looked 
at  either  from  the  point  of  view  offered  by  an  analysis  of  the 
content  and  nature  of  religion  itself,  or  from  that  of  an  attempt 
to  interpret  the  religious  development  of  humanity.  The  two 
aspects  of  religion  may,  indeed,  be  viewed  together  in  some 
such  declaration  as  the  following:  "God's  revelation  to  man, 
and  man's  discovery  of  God,  are  but  two  sides  of  the  same  di- 
vine education  of  the  race."  Or  better  still :  What  is  called, 
when  considered  from  one  point  of  view,  the  history  of  the 
self-revelation  of  God,  may  also  with  equal  propriety,  when  re- 
garded from  another  point  of  view,  be  called  man's  progress  in 
the  knowledge,  feeling,  and  service  of  God. 

Essentially  considered,  all  religion  is  a  Divine  Self-revelation, 
— a  revealing,  or  making  of  God  known,  by  God,  to  man.  As 
says  a  recent  writer  on  apologetics  :  ^  "  Religion  is  conscious- 
ness of  God,  awakened  by  impressions  of  God  upon  the 
rational  personality.  It  is  therefore  either  an  illusion,  or  else 
God  himself  must  have  called  it  forth  in  man."  Tliis  is  to  say, 
that  either   the  central  truth  of  religion,  as  it  is  involved  in 

1  D.  H.  Schultz,  Grundriss  der  Christlichen  Apologetik,  p.  20. 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  411 

man's  attitude  toward  God,  has  reality  because  it  is  produced 
and  validated  by  the  Spirit  of  God ;  or  else  religion  itself  is  the 
product  of  man's  undeveloped  fancy,  is  without  cosmic  correlate, 
and  is  rather  a  dream,  from  which,  when  his  brain  is  better 
nourished,  and  his  mind  more  illumined,  he  may  awake  to  the 
knowledge  of  having  been  self-deceived. 

The  Source  of  revelation  is  God.  This  statement  follows  as 
a  matter  of  course  from  the  conception  of  the  Being  of  God  as 
omniscient  and  holy  Spirit,  and  of  his  ever  living,  active  and 
omnipresent  relations  to  the  world.  However  various  the 
modes  emphasized  in  the  different  religions,  and  however  nu- 
merous the  media  employed  by  them,  there  is  one,  and  only  one 
source  of  revelation ;  from  the  point  of  view  of  theistic  reli- 
gious philosophy,  this  source  is  the  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  the 
Self-Revealer  in  all  the  religious  experience  of  the  individual 
and  of  the  race. 

The  Object  of  revelation  is  also  God: — not,  however,  as  an 
abstract  conception,  or  as  a  system  of  religious  philosophy 
given,  as  it  were,  ready-made ;  but  as  a  personal  Life,  working 
in  immanent  and  historically  continuous  communion  with  the 
developing  life  of  humanity.  It  is  the  making  known,  that  lie 
is,  and  what  He  is,  in  all  those  relations  which  religion  sym- 
boUcally  recognizes  in  its  doctrines  of  God,  the  Creator,  L'^p- 
hohler,  Destroyer,  Moral  Ruler,  and  Redeemer,  of  the  world, 
which  constitutes  the  one  object  of  the  Divine  work  of  revehi- 
tion. 

The  Subject  of  revelation  is  man: — primarily,  tlie  individual 
to  whom  the  revelation  comes,  and  in  whose  experience  (iod 
makes  himself  to  Ix;  felt  and  known  ;  but  secondarily  and  su- 
pHMnely,  in  the  rijligious  ex[)erience  of  the  race  considered  as 
an  liistoriral  s(;ries  of  human,  individual  consciousnesses,  who 
are  related  in  space  and  time,  by  a  variety  of  political,  ethical, 
and  social  bonds.  It  is  humanity  to  whicli  God  is  revealing 
Hinist'lf.  I'roni  this  genenil  truth,  two  most  important  corol- 
laries  follow.     And,  first,  the  vt-ry  nature  of  religion,  consid- 


412  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ered  as  a  Divine  Self-revelation,  is  such  that,  from  the  psycho- 
logical point  of  view,  the  process  of  revealing  requires  the  co- 
ojDerating  activity  of  the  entire  nature  of  man.  Although  the 
term  "  revelation  "  lays  emphasis  on  knowledge  as  the  product 
of  man's  intellectual  and  cognitive  activities,  it  does  not  ex- 
clude, but  the  rather  of  necessity  includes,  the  accompanying 
functions  of  affection  and  will.  Only  through  the  spirit  of 
piety  in  man  is  God  made  known  to  man.  He  that  wills  to  do 
God's  will,  as  Jesus  said,  shall  know  of  the  doctrine.  But, 
secondly,  revelation  is  in  its  very  nature  an  act  of  divine  con- 
descension. The  character  of  the  individual,  or  of  the  com- 
munity, always  furnishes  conditions  to  the  character  of  the 
revelation  itself.  To  use  the  figurative  language  of  the  reli- 
gious consciousness  :  In  every  act  of  revelation,  and  in  its  en- 
tirety as  an  historical  process,  God  "  stoops  "  to  man  ;  He  adapts 
himself  to  the  capacities  and  necessities  of  those  to  whom  he 
would  make  himself  known. 

The  "  historical  conditionateness "  of  revelation  follows 
from  all  this.  Revelation  is  always  some  fact  in  history ;  and 
the  series  of  "  revealings,"  when  discovered,  treated  pragmati- 
cally, and  interpreted  according  to  their  significance  for  the 
religious  development  of  the  race,  is  nothing  other  than  the 
actual  history  of  revelation.  Like  every  other  narrative,  that 
of  revelation  should  be  studied  with  reserve,  with  candor,  with 
a  critical  estimate  of  claims,  but  with  a  due  evaluation  of  the 
significance  of  the  facts.  For  the  history  of  man's  religious 
evolution  is  not  antithetic  to  the  rational  doctrine  of  a  Divine 
Self-revealing.  On  the  contrary,  the  historical  view  of  reli- 
gion, as  an  important  and  necessary  phase  of  man's  complex 
development,  demands  a  doctrine  of  revelation  which  shall  be 
so  framed  as  to  accord  with  the  historical  facts.  If,  on  the  one 
hand,  we  ivy  to  weaken  or  to  escape  the  force  of  the  conclusion 
by  a  wrong  use  of  such  terms  as  *'  special  revelation,"  "  spe- 
cial divine  dispensation,"  etc.,  we  are  at  once  convicted  of  a 
retreat  to  that  lower  point  of  view,  from  which  it  is  impossible 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  413 

to  estimate  fairly  the  plienomena  of  man's  religious  life  and  re- 
ligious development.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  indicative  of  a 
lingering  narrowness  of  conception,  of  a  painful  failure  to 
rise  to  the  higher  point  of  view,  when  such  terms  as  "  super- 
natural," *•  revelation,"  "inspiration,"  etc.,  are  discredited  by 
the  advocates  of  the  study  of  religious  phenomena  from  a 
purely  historical  point  of  view. 

As  in  the  case  of  all  the  other  great  religious  conceptions 
and  doctrines,  the  conception  of  Revelation  has  undergone  a 
process  of  clarifying  and  uplift  from  the  earliest  dawn  of  re- 
ligious consciousness,  so  far  as  history  enables  us  to  trace  this 
process,  until  the  present  tune.  We  may  not,  indeed,  be  able 
to  accept  with  confidence  the  contention  of  ]\I.  de  Bonald,  that 
a  primitive  supernatural  revelation  is  "the  absolute  condition 
of  human  life,  such  as  it  is  unfolded  in  history."  '  But  this 
inability,  if  conceded,  would  not  controvert  the  truth  of  the 
facts  upon  which  Brinton  relies  in  making  the  statement :  ^ 
"  I  shall  tell  you  of  religions  so  crude  as  to  have  no  temples 
or  altars,  no  rites  or  pmyers ;  but  I  can  tell  you  of  none  that 
does  not  teach  the  belief  of  the  intercommunion  of  the  spiritual 
powers  and  man.  Every  religion  is  a  Revelation — in  the  opin- 
ion of  its  votaries."  "  Not  only  that  *  God  is  above  us,'  but 
also  that  *God  is  in  us,' "  says  Tiele,^  "  is  a  belief  common  to 
all  religions."  But  it  is  the  special  character  given  to  tlie  idea 
of  revelation  by  the  two  great  workl-religions,  Budilhism  and 
Christianity,  which  distinguishes  them  above  others.  All  re- 
ligions accept,  and  virtually  originate  in,  revelation  ;  oracles, 
prophets,  signs  and  wonders,  belong  to  them  all.  Most  re- 
ligions identify  the  organs  or  books  of  revelation  with  the  revela- 
tion itself.  But  tlie.se  two  regard  the  individual  Foundoi-s  iis 
special  and   supreme   revealere   of  a   new    religious   doctrine. 

*  See  Ri^'villc,  I'rolcKomona  of  the  History  of  Religions,  chap.  Ill,  on  "The 
Primitive  Revelation." 

'  ReligionH  of  Primitive  Peoples,  p.  .'SO. 

>Elcmenta  of  the  Science  of  Religion,  Second  Scries,  p.  103/. 


414  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Otherwise,  they  differ  in  their  doctrine  of  revelation.  With 
Buddhism,  incarnations  of  the  Divine  Being  come  at  different 
epochs  to  make  known,  and  illustrate,  the  way  of  salvation  to 
man.  With  Christianity,  God  is  regarded  as  steadfastly  im- 
manent in  humanity,  revealing  Himself  as  its  Redeemer  by  an 
historical,  but  spiritual  process,  that  has  for  its  goal  the  found- 
ing of  the  perfect  social  community,  the  Kingdom  of  God 
among  men. 

All  these  truths  as  to  the  source,  object,  subject,  and  process 
of  revelation,  which  are  only  dimly  foreshadowed  and  pre- 
sented in  a  fragmentary  way  by  the  lower  religions,  are  abso- 
lutely essential  factors  in  that  theistic  conception  which  regards 
the  relations  of  God  to  the  world  as  those  of  a  perfect  Ethical 
Spirit  to  finite  spirits  existing  under  the  conditions  of  an  his- 
torical redemptive  process.  "  Atheism  may  consistently  aver 
that  all  religions,  Judaism  and  Christianity  included,  are  only 
differing  forms  of  superstition ;  Deism  may  deny  that  any  one 
form  of  revelation  can  really  possess  those  supernatural  char- 
acteristics which  all  these  religions,  in  fact,  claim  for  themselves ; 
Pantheism  may  assert  that  there  is  no  substantial  and  personal 
distinction  between  the  object  and  subject  of  revelation.  But 
according  to  the  theistic  conception  of  God  and  his  relations 
to  the  world,  religion,  which  involves  real  relations  of  fear, 
obedience,  and  love,  between  the  Absolute  Personality  and  the 
personality  of  man,  cannot  exist  without  revelation.  The  Di- 
vine must  come  forth  from  the  unknown,  from  that  which  he 
is  *  in-himself,'  in  order  to  make  himself  known,  in  order  to 
reveal  himself  to  man."  ^ 

On  the  other  hand,  the  historical  nature  and  *'  conditionate- 
ness "  of  all  religious  revelation  can  least  of  all  be  denied 
by  the  theist  and  believer  in  Biblical  religion.  The  facts  of 
Biblical  religion,  as  known  by  modern  scholarship,  show  that, 
however  special  its  development,  it  had,  back  of  and  around 
it,  the  same  so-called  "  natural,"  heathenish,  and  even  super- 

1  Quoted  from  the  author's  Doctrine  of  Sacred  Scripture,  II,  p.  306 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  415 

stitious  and  mythical  elements,  which  are  found  in  all  the  other 
greater  religions.  Moreover,  the  statements  and  attitudes  of 
the  most  illumining  of  the  Biblical  writers  themselves,  and  of 
the  teachers  of  the  Christian  Church,  ancient  and  modern,  con- 
firm the  view  that  this  revelation  was  a  movement  from  the 
imperfect  to  the  more  perfect,  from  that  adapted  to  lower  con- 
ditions upward  toward  tlie  higlier  and  more  universaL  Thougli 
divinely  produced  and  fostered,  it  occurred  under  the  condi- 
tions of  an  actual,  historical  process.  Indeed,  the  teachings 
of  Biblical  religion  can  be  summed  up  in  no  better  way  than 
to  declare :  It  is  God  making  himself  known  as  the  Redeemer 
by  his  immanence  in  the  history  of  humanity.  The  specialty 
of  this  religion  is  its  possession,  in  a  special  degree,  of  those 
characteristics  by  which  we  rightly  judge  the  theoretical  and 
practical  worth  of  all  religious  experience. 

The  psychology  of  revelation  requires  little  special  discus- 
sion, in  view  of  what  has  already  been  said  with  so  much  de- 
tail regarding  the  religious  nature  of  man,  and  the  nature  of 
man's  religion,  from  the  psychological  point  of  view.  The  ten- 
dency to  believe  in  revelation,  and  indeed  the  somewhat  im- 
perative need  of  this  belief,  comes  from  the  inexhaustible  spring 
of  religious  experience.  But  this  tendency  is  especially  aroused 
and  fostered,  it  would  appear,  by  the  following  three  consider- 
ations :  (1)  The  mystery  of  speech  and  the  other  mysterious 
signs  of  intelligence  which  man's  environment  shows  to  him; 
(2)  the  need  of  authority,  and  the  longing  for  it,  in  order  to 
attiiin  some,  at  least  temporarily  and  partially  satisfactory 
theory  of  existence,  that  sliall  allow  an  ontological  value  to  the 
fundamental!  principles  and  higher  ideals  of  human  rciison; 
and  (3)  the  pressure  of  life's  practical  interests,  as  contnusted 
with  nian's  ii^norance  of  the  causes  which  favor  or  hinder  these 
interests,  and  in  particular,  his  ignorance  of  the  future,  ho\}\  of 
his  bodily  life  and  also  of  wluit  comes  to  liim  after  death.  It 
is  in  the  demand  which  arises  out  of  these  needs,  and  in  the 
effort  to  meet  the  demand,  that  religions  in  general  have  their 


416  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

origin.  It  is  by  the  way  in  which  they  meet  this  demand,  and 
supply  these  needs,  that  the  different  religions  are  valued  by 
their  disciples  and  devotees.  Knowledje^  or  at  least  the  sem- 
blance of  knowledge,  is  craved  by  the  aspiring  soul  of  man. 
Religion  claims  to  furnish  this  knowledge ;  Revelation  is,  there- 
fore, of  its  essence,  so  to  say. 

In  their  work  of  revealing,  the  divine  beings  or  superhuman 
invisible  powers  have  traditionally  been  supposed  to  make  use 
of  a  great  variety  of  Means.  And  why  should  it  not  be  so ;  since 
a  great  variety  of  means  is  at  their  disposal,  and  is  plainly 
serviceable  for  their  purposes.  Among  such  media  of  revela- 
tion as  are  chiefly  employed  in  the  relatively  non-moral  and 
irrational  stages  of  religion,  are  a  great  diversity  of  omens,  the 
casting  of  lots,  oracles,  dreams,  and  strange  and  unintelligible 
events.^  Among  the  Romans  the  college  of  augurs  was  the 
appointed  and  legally  regulated  way  of  ascertaining  the  will 
of  the  gods.  Their  cult  was  neither  petitionary  nor  piacular, 
but  rather  a  kind  of  refined  and  elaborated  magic.  With  this 
people  the  "  haruspices  "  or  diviners,  appear  to  have  been  of 
Etruscan  orighi ;  and  the  three  classes  of  divination  were  view- 
ing the  entrails,  the  token  of  lightning,  and  the  interpretation 
of  unnatural  and  significant  occurrences,  or  portents  (^ostenta).'^ 
In  Old-Testament  times,  as  in  the  Chinese  Joss-house  to-day, 
the  casting  of  lots  was  thought  to  afford  a  way  of  discovering 
the  secrets  of  the  divine  mind  as  to  the  future ;  then,  and  al- 
ways, because  they  are  subject  to  the  control  of  the  unscrupu- 
lous priest  or  seer,  oracles  are  of  all  the  alleged  media  of  reve- 
lation most  uncertain  and  liable  to  misuse.  In  tlie  development 
of  Biblical  religion  dreams  and  visions  had  no  unimportant 
place.  In  the  experiences  of  the  founder  of  the  faith  of  Islam, 
the  first  beginnings  of  his  inspiration  came  in  the  form  of  "real 


1  For  a  classified  list  of  omens  among  the  Assyrians  and  Babylonians, 
see  Jastrow,  Ibid.,  pp.  352^. 

2  See  Wissowa,  Religion  und  Kultus  der  Romer,  pp.  461^. 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  417 

visions."  "  Every  vision  that  he  saw  was  clear  as  the  morning- 
dawn,"  says  one  of  the  biographers  of  Muhammad. 

He  who  holds  to  a  rational  faith  in  Providence,  at  once  uni- 
versal and  also  special,  detailed,  and  minute,  cannot  fail  to  ad- 
mit the  possibility  of  the  divine  will  making  itself  known 
through  any  of  these  ethically  inferior  means  of  revelation. 
The  smoking  entrails  of  animals  just  slain,  the  flight  of  birds, 
the  flash  of  lightning,  the  natural  poitent,  or  the  sepulchral 
utterance  from  tlie  seer's  cave,  may  give  a  new  impression  tliat 
God  is,  and  an  expanded  idea  of  wliat  he  is,  to  men  in  the  lower 
stages  of  their  ethico-religious  evolution.  But,  on  the  other 
luuid,  no  means  of  revelation  are  adequate  to  convey  a  finished 
p^t)duct  of  comprehensive  knowledge  ;  and  no  inspiration  guar- 
antees such  infallibility  that  the  truth  revealed  needs  no  ex- 
amination or  further  expansion  by  other  divinely  illumined 
minds.  Revelation,  by  whatever  means  accomplished,  is  an 
act  of  divine  condescension,  which  is  conditioned  upon  the 
psychological  development,  and  pliysical  and  historical  environ- 
ment, of  those  to  whom  the  revelation  comes.  Imperfection 
and  admixture  of  error,  and  even  factors  due  to  self-deceit  or 
to  the  selfish  desire  to  deceive  otliers,  are  present  quite  as  a 
rule.  But  even  liars  and  fools  may  reveal  God,  if  only  their 
word  comes,  as  in  the  long  run  it  is  sure  to  do,  to  be  taken  at 
ita  real  worth.  While  always,  and  in  all  religions,  it  is  largely 
out  of  the  m(mths  of  babes  and  sucklings  that  he  has  ordained 
his  strength  to  Ix)  made  known. 

As  humanity  rises  in  race-culture,  however,  it  is  not  tlie 
most  marvelous  and  extraordinary  natural  occurrences,  but 
the  rather  tlie  estiiblished  cosmic  order  which  becomes  the  pre- 
ferred means  of  the  Divine  Self-revelation  in  nature.  Tlie 
relation  of  this  cosmic  order  to  the  work  of  making  God  known 
is  expressed  by  certiiin  teachings  in  even  the  earlier  sUiges  of 
the  world's  religions  history.  That  the  heavens  reveal  the 
glory  of  God  is  the  voice  of  Old-Testament  pi('ty.     And  Paul 

declares  (Horn,  i,  19-25)  that  they  are  "without  excuse,"  and 

*>? 


418  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

have  "  vain  imaginations  "  and  ''  darkened,  foolish  hearts," 
who  do  not  understand  "  the  invisible  things  of  the  eternal 
power  and  Godhead,"  as  they  are  clearly  seen  and  "  understood 
by  the  things  that  are  made."  In  the  same  spirit,  the  denial 
of  the  divine  revelation  in  and  through  nature  has  been  de- 
clared heretical  by  an  ecumenical  council  of  the  Roman  Cath- 
olic Church.  And  if  an  appeal  is  taken  to  the  eesthetical  ap- 
preciation of  nature  as  it  is  expressed  in  the  more  exalted 
strains  of  poetry,  we  find  it  confirming  the  religious  conscious- 
ness in  its  conviction : — 

"  Forever  at  the  loom  of  time  I  ply, 
And  weave  for  God  the  garment  thou  seest  Him  by." 

On  the  other  hand,  modern  science  in  its  effort  to  substitute 
for  the  God  of  religion  the  more  abstract  conception  of  a 
"  Mother-Nature  "  (so  Haeckel)  or  a  Nature-God  (Goethe),  and 
modern  religious  dogma  in  its  reactions  against  the  former  ex- 
tremes of  so-called  "  natural ''  theology,  have  combined  to  de- 
preciate the  divine  revelation  in  the  cosmic  forces  and  processes. 
And,  indeed,  nature  cannot  reveal  God  to  the  man  who  is  merely 
a  child  of  nature.  What  nature  is  to  the  individual  and  to  the 
race,  depends  upon  what  the  individual  is,  and  what  the  race 
is — sesthetically,  ethically,  and  religiously.  The  history  of 
man's  moral  and  social  elevation  evinces  the  preparation  which 
the  race  has  undergone  in  order  to  receive  and  interpret  this 
form  of  the  Divine  Self -revelation.  Nature  "  in-itself,"  or  con- 
sidered from  the  purely  scientific  point  of  view,  does  not  make 
God  known. 

The  human  mind  never — not  even  (it  might  almost  be  said, 
least  of  all)  when  it  faces  natural  phenomena  in  the  scientific 
attitude — receives  and  interprets  its  impressions  in  a  purely 
unsentimental  and  unideal  way.  Through  natural  phenomena 
God  did,  in  fact,  reveal  himself  to  primitive  man  in  the  form  of 
the  invisible  spiritual  environment,  with  which  man  must 
reckon,  and  to  which  he  must  "  square  himself,"  in  order  to  at- 
tain the  good  he  desires  and  to  avoid  the  evils  he  dreads.     But 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  419 

as  man  rises  in  the  ethical  scale  and  conceives  of  the  Divine 
Being  as  more  distinctively  ethical,  nature  itself  appears  to 
him  to  be  the  minister  of  the  divine,  ethical  purposes.  God 
then  appears  in  the  natural  phenomena,  ruling  the  world  thus 
in  righteousness.  Finally,  to  the  more  mature,  reflective  re- 
ligious consciousness  God  becomes  the  active  principle  of  that 
rational  order  which  both  science  and  religion  attribute  to  the 
Cosmos  ;  in,  and  through,  that  order  God  is  perpetually  mak- 
ing himself  known. 

The  self-revelation  of  God  in  human  histor}"  and  in  Providence 
is  yet  more  distinctly  and  forcefully  evinced  as  a  tenet  of  the 
philosophy  of  religion.  Among  all  the  various  forms  of  his- 
tovy  this  process  is  especially  significant  in  the  historical  de- 
velopment of  religion  itself.  By  accepting  this  statement  a 
return  is  once  more  made  to  tlie  point  of  view  from  which  the 
process  of  the  Divine  Self-revealing  and  the  history  of  man's 
religious  evolution  seem  to  run  parallel  to  the  end;  if  they  do 
not,  the  rather,  perfectly  coincide. 

In  the  religious  history  of  humanity  it  is  human  thought  and 
human  speech  which  are  the  most  distinctive  and  effective 
media  of  the  Self-revelation  of  God  ;  and  yet  more  especially, 
the  thought  and  speech  of  the  divinely  selected  and  in- 
spired men  of  revelation.  Above  all  the  other  means,  then, 
which  the  Divine  Being  employs  to  make  himself  known  are 
the  prophets,  religious  teachers  and  reformers,  and  the  found- 
ers of  new  and  epocli-making  religious  movements.  As  in 
every  other  form  of  the  development  of  humanity,  so  in  reli- 
gion it  is  the  few  that  lead  the  race.  And  such  is  the  very 
nature  of  religion,  that  only  finite  spirit  can  afford  to  Infinite 
Spirit  the  fullest  and  the  most  effective  medium  of  revelation. 
Humanity  reveals  tlie  Superliuman  as  entering  its  own  con- 
scious tliouglits  and  utterances ;  but  this  is  God  in  man,  mak- 
ing God  known  to  man.  Only  through  finite  solves  can  the 
Al)Solute  Self  reveal  liis  own  Self. 

As  they  Iiave  risen  alxjve  the  earlier  and  cruder  stages  of 


420  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

their  development,  all  religions  have,  therefore,  been  dependent 
upon  their  prophets,  priests,  and  religious  teachers,  for  their 
knowledge  of  religious  truth.  Nor  is  such  dependence  cere- 
monial or  external  merely ;  it  is,  the  rather,  of  the  same  nature 
essentially  as  that  which  the  history  of  race-culture  every- 
where exhibits  ;  it  is  the  dependence  of  the  relatively  obscure 
and  unreflective,  upon  the  more  enlightened  and  thoughtful 
minds.  This  voice  of  God  to  man,  through  man,  has  been  vari- 
ously expressed.  In  the  creeds  of  these  different  religions,  the 
avatars  of  Vishnu,  the  various  incarnations  of  the  Buddha,  the 
demi-gods  that  descended  from  the  Scandinavian  Heimdallr, 
the  prophets  and  seers  of  Old-Testament  religion,  and  Jesus  and 
his  Apostles  in  the  New  Dispensation,  all  have  the  office  of  re- 
vealing God  to  man.  Indeed,  the  doctrine  of  religious  revela- 
tion culminates  in  the  belief,  which  the  facts  amply  warrant ; — 
namely,  that  some  members  of  the  race  are  constitutionally, 
and  by  habits  of  thought  and  feeling,  and  by  purity  of  life,  as 
well  as  by  what  we  are  entitled  to  consider  especial  spiritual 
impulses  and  insights,  fitted  to  convey  the  truths  of  religion  to 
their  fellow  men.  To  these  "  men  of  revelation "  the  race 
does,  in  fact,  chiefly  owe  its  growing  and  improved  religious 
conceptions  and  practices. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  the  religious  doctrine  of  Inspiration 
becomes  intimately  and  necessarily  connected  with  the  doctrine 
of  revelation.  Revelation,  or  God's  making  Himself  known  as 
immanent  Spirit  in  human  history,  is  indeed  the  primary  con- 
ception ;  inspiration  is  a  secondary,  dependent,  and  yet  neces- 
sarily correlated  conception.  Inspiration  is  the  subjective  or 
inward  influence  upon  the  whole  mental  life,  which  makes  pos- 
sible the  revelation.  Religious  inspiration  differs  from  other 
allied  forms  of  inspiration,  according  as  the  character  of  the 
mental  activities  necessary  for  the  apprehension  of  new  reli- 
gious truth  differs  from  that  necessary  for  the  apprehension  of 
other  new  truth.  More  definitively,  these  three  distinctions 
are  important :   (1)  Revelation  lays  emphasis  upon  growth  in 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  421 

the  knowledge  of  religious  truth  rather  than  upon  the  excite- 
ment of  the  feelings,  and  the  culture  of  the  practical  activities 
of  religion ;  (2)  Revelation  lays  emphasis  upon  a  product 
rather  than  upon  a  process,  considered  as  a  kind  of  recipiency  or 
functioning  of  the  mind, — upon  truth  gained  rather  than  upon 
the  way  of  gaining  it ;  (3)  Revelation  lays  emphasis  upon  the 
more  permanent  and  organic  factoi'S,  but  inspiration  upon  a 
state  that  may  temporarily  be  induced  under  divine  influences. 
As  says  a  great  German  theologian  ^ :  "  Revelation,  in  process 
of  being  imparted  to  the  spirit  of  man,  is,  so  far  as  its  form  is 
concerned,  inspiration."  This  is  to  say  that,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  religious  experience,  the  formal  process  which  occurs 
in  the  mental  life  while  the  truth  is  being  made  known,  is 
itself  an  inspiration; — or,  as  the  figure  of  speech  suggests,  a 
stirring-up  of  the  finite  human  spirit  by  the  Infmite  Spirit. 
Spiritual  truth  is  made  known  by  communion  of  human  spirits 
with  the  Spirit  of  God. 

The  relation  between  revelation  and  inspiration  may  be  con- 
sidered from  the  point  of  view  of  religious  experience,  as  this 
relation  finds  application  both  to  the  individual  soul  and  also 
to  the  religious  development  of  the  race.  In  the  case  of  the 
individual,  the  attitude  of  piety  is  one  of  receptivity  toward 
the  truth,  of  reverence  for  its  appearance,  and  of  thankfulness 
and  praise  for  its  possession.  Thus  the  soul  is  open  to  the 
Revealer  of  all  truth,  to  Ilim  in  whose  right  hand  the  gift  of 
truth  is  held.  But  in  its  larger  application,  the  immanence 
of  the  revealing  and  inspiring  presence  of  God  is  recognized 
as  necessary  to  interpret  the  religious  development  of  the  race. 
As  God  is  made  known  to  humanity  in  an  historical  way ;  so  a 
process  of  ethical  illumining,  elevating,  and  purifying,  has  made 
humanity  8UscL'pti])le  to  tlie  advancing  degrees  of  revelation. 
But  this  two-fold  [)rocess  itself  has  alwavs  l)een  fhiffly  achieved 
by  the  activity  of  the  inspired  men  of  revelation.  Tlirough 
tliem  has  come  about  the  ment^il  seizure  of  religious  truth,  and 

'  J.  A.  Dorncr,  Christliche  GlaubciiJilehre,  I,  p.  620. 


422  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  convincing  proclamation  and  living  manifestation  of  tliis 
truth. 

Inspiration  is,  therefore,  a  term  which  applies,  primarily, 
only  to  personal  beings.  To  be  capable  of  being  inspired  is  to 
be  a  Self;  and  the  religious  doctrine  of  inspiration  assumes 
the  Selfhood  of  the  Divine  Being.  From  this  important  general 
truth,  the  psychologically  correct  inference  follows  in  a  neces- 
sary way.  The  kinds  and  degrees  of  inspiration  vary  with  the 
personal  characteristics,  development,  and  environment,  of  the 
inspired  personality.  The  subject  always  furnishes  limiting 
conditions  to  the  character  and  extent  of  the  inspiration. 
"  That  the  inspiration  of  different  persons  will  differ  in  the  de- 
gree and  mode  of  its  manifestation,  is  a  corollary  from  the 
general  truth  which  makes  inspiration  a  truly  personal  affair."  ^ 
In  different  individuals,  or  in  different  inspirations  of  the  same 
individuals,  the  subjective  conditions  are  always  made  promi- 
nent, both  in  respect  of  the  functions  involved  and  also  of  the 
product  of  truth  evolved.  Now  the  psychology  of  the  inspired 
mental  state  must  take  account  of  temperament,  mood,  con- 
stitutional and  acquired  capacity;  of  the  cliaracter  of  the 
theme  upon  which  feeling  and  thought  are  concentrated,  and 
of  the  conditions  surrounding  the  expression  of  tliis  feeling 
and  thought.  The  inspiration  of  the  poet  is  not  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  inventor,  or  the  warrior.  The  inspiration  of  Sakya- 
Muni  differs  from  that  of  Zarathustra ;  nor  is  either  of  these 
like  tliatof  Muhammad.  Within  the  sphere  of  Old-Testament 
religion  we  find  inspired  poets,  statesmen,  artisans,  and  warriors, 
all  serving  Yahweh,  and  all  made  ready  for  this  service  by  the 
inflatus  of  his  Spirit.  While,  in  their  mental  apprehension  and 
unfolding  of  the  truth  of  the  religion  of  Christ,  the  inspiration 
of  Peter  is  markedly  different  from  that  of  the  writer  of  the  Gos- 
pel and  Epistles  of  John ;  and  neither  of  these  furnishes  the 
pattern  to  be  copied  exactly  by  such  revelations  and  inspira- 
tions as  were  divinely  accorded  to  Paul. 

1  Quoted  from  the  author's  Doctrine  of  Sacred  Scripture,  II,  p.  474. 


RE\nELATIOX  AND  INSPIRATION  423 

Particularly  characteristic,  however,  of  the  higher  and  more 
efficient  kinds  of  religious  inspiration  is  its  ethical  d>/namics, — 
its  moral  insight,  moral  conviction,  moral  choice  inflexibly 
directed  toward  doing  the  Divine  Will.  In  the  lower  stages 
of  man's  religious  life,  on  the  contrary,  the  form,  the  product, 
and  the  testing  of  the  supposed  divine  influence  are  of  corre- 
spondingly low  and  unethical  character.  The  earliest  concep- 
tion of  inspiration  is,  indeed,  chiefly  confined  to  the  theory  and 
practice  of  witchcraft  and  demoniacal  possession.  This  con- 
ception implies  that  the  god  being  of  an  evil  disposition,  has 
possessed  the  soul  of  the  human  being,  or  has  sent  some  of  his 
subject  spirits  to  take  possession  of  it.  But  the  witch  or  devil- 
priest  knows  the  formula  necessary  to  dispossess  this  bad  spirit, 
and  perhaps  to  substitute  another  more  kindly  spirit  in  its 
stead.  Again,  the  priest  or  priestess  goes  into  a  condition  of 
trance  or  ecstasy,  under  the  influence  of  the  god,  and  during 
this  condition  some  secret  as  to  the  future  becomes  divinely 
revealed,  or  some  special  insight  into  present  fact  or  truth 
is  obtained.  In  the  Babylonian  texts  containing  incan tuitions, 
for  example,  one  series  which  covered  no  less  than  sixteen 
tablets,  bore  the  name  of  **  the  evil  demon  " — these  incantiitions 
Ixii ng  supi)Osed  to  afford  special  protection  against  various 
classes  of  demons.*  Another  series  which  dealt  witli  various 
mental  derangements,  was  known  as  the  series  of  *'  liead-sickness, 
etc."  But  the  priests,  since  they  had  even  superior  knowledge 
revealed  to  them  l)y  the  gods,  and  were  inspired  for  this  mediat- 
ing and  protecting  office,  could  exorcise  the  male  and  female 
witches  "  by  command  of  Marduk,  the  lord  of  charms,"  or 
could  threaten  them  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  with  the  same 
evils  whicli  they  liad  inflicted. 

In  the  Okl-Testanu'iit  religii^n,  plain  indications  of  the  same 
low  views  of  inspiration  b<'long  to  the  earlier  writings.     In  ilie 

»  On  this  .siihjoct  Hce  the  recently  published  book  by  U.  C.  Thompson, 
"The  Devils  unci  Kvil  Spirita  of  liubyloniu"  (2  vob.),  in  Lurac's  Semitic 
Text  and  Truntilution  Scricji. 


424  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

development  of  Biblical  religion,  as  in  all  religious  develop- 
ments,— and,  indeed,  as  a  general  principle  illustrated  by  every 
form  of  evolution, — progress  consists,  not  so  much  in  totally 
suppressing  any  of  the  ancient  beliefs  concerning  the  gods,  as 
in  purifj'ing,  expanding,  and  elevating  them  to  a  higher  degree 
of  moral  value  and  of  practical  power.  The  command,  "  Thou 
shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  to  live,"  and  the  penalty  for  those  who 
consulted  spirits  supposed  to  be  raised  from  the  dead,  were,  at 
first,  directed  against  oracles  that  were  not  under  the  patronage 
of  Yahweh.  Prophetic  ecstasy  continues  even  in  the  New- 
Testament  era  to  be  highly  regarded  as  a  kind  of  inspiration. 
And  some  of  the  greater  prophets,  as  well  as  the  Apostles, 
have  important  communications  of  truths  made  to  them  while 
in  a  condition  of  trance,  "  having  the  eyes  open." 

Here  also,  however,  the  value  of  calm,  rational  insight,  and 
of  the  thoughts  that  are  either  "  borne  in  upon  the  mind,"  or 
are  matured  there  more  slowly,  as  reflection  broods  over  ex- 
perience, and  experience  itself  is  made  richer,  broader,  and 
more  profound  thereby,  becomes  increasingly  greater.  "  What 
think  you  of  God  ?  "  and  ''  What  of  man,  his  life,  his  relations 
to  God,  his  duty,  and  his  destiny?"  These  problems,  rather 
than  how  to  secure  one's  crops  or  boats  from  stress  of  weather, 
or  to  guard  one's  sanitary  or  business  interests  by  incantations 
and  sacrifices,  become  the  great  and  pressing  inquiries  for  the 
human  soul.  He  who  can  throw  light  upon  these  inquiries  is 
now  esteemed  as  the  "  man  of  revelation  ;  "  he  who  is  raised  in 
spirit  to  the  point  of  view  where  he  catches  and  reflects  the 
pure  glow  of  the  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  is  the  "  inspired  man." 

Such  inspired  men  of  revelation  are  found  as  historical  char- 
acters in  all  the  various  progressive  religions  which  liave  arisen 
in  the  past ;  especially  so,  in  ancient  times,  both  in  numbers 
and  in  quality,  among  the  Prophets  and  Psalmists  of  Israel. 
More  and  more,  as  the  centuries  of  Israel's  broken  national  life 
went  on,  did  those  great  truths  of  religion  which  address  and 
command  the  reason,  stir  the  heart,  and  form  the  life  of  conduct, 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  425 

clarify  themselves  in  the  utterances  of  this  remarkable  succes- 
sion of  inspired  men.  Both  as  revealing  religious  truth  and 
as  shaping  religious  history,  they  prepared  the  way  for  the  com- 
ing, higher  and  even  unique  Divine  Self-revelation. 

In  Christianity,  the  special  self-revelation  of  Divine  Being 
as  the  Father  and  Redeemer  of  mankind  is  considered  to  have 
been  made  through  Jesus  Christ.  This  relationship  of  Jesus 
to  God  as  revealer  Ls  summarized  in  the  claims  which  are  attrib- 
uted to  him,  such  as  the  following :  "  All  things  are  delivered 
unto  me  of  my  Father,  and  no  man  knoweth  who  the  Son  is 
but  the  Father,  and  who  the  Father  is,  but  the  Son  and  he  to 
whom  the  Son  will  reveal  it"  (Luke  x,  22 ;  and  Matt,  xi,  27). 
But  especially  is  it  the  purpose  of  John's  Gospel  to  set  forth 
the  claims  of  Jesus  to  be  tlie  revealer  of  God.  The  one 
thought  on  which  the  early  Apologists — those  Greek  thinkers 
who  strove  by  reflection  upon  the  content  of  Christian  expe- 
rience to  make  Christian  doctrine  acceptable  to  the  reason  and 
common-sense  of  the  Graeco-Roraan  world — was  this :  Chris- 
tianity is  revelation  indeed,  is  real  revelation.  This  truth 
they  undertook  to  prove  by  an  appeal  to  what  is  universal  in 
man.  But  what  28  universal  in  man  ?  His  reason,  his  capacity 
for  discovering  and  recognizing  the  truth.  This  apologetic 
attempt,  as  a  matter  of  historical  development  under  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  mental  life  and  philosopliical  speculations 
of  the  time,  brought  about  a  demand  that  the  position  of  the 
Churcli  Catholic  should  difference  itself  from  that  of  the 
Gnostics,  who  were  to  be  rejected  as  heretics  by  the  Church.^ 
What  is  Christianity,  in  its  character  as  a  Revelation?  wits 
the  specuLitive  question  of  the  age.     The  Gnostics  proposed 

*  That  a  certain  ground  was  afTorded  for  Gnostic  claims  by  the  teachings 
of  the  New-Testament  writers,  and  even  by  those  recorded  of  Christ  him- 
self, there  can  be  little  donbt.  Even  in  the  declarations  cited  above,  the 
diMtinguishcd  commentator,  H.  A.  \V.  Meyer  (on  Luke  x,  22),  says  the 
Marcionit«  reading  tfyut  is  more  prolmbly  original,  and  not  a  Gnostic 
alteration;  since  the  tcstiuKJuy  for  it  is  of  a  higher  antiquity  tluin  that  for 
the  reading  7ii'w<r»c«4, 


426  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

tests  of  the  absolute  character  of  this  particular  form  of  reli- 
gious belief,  which  transcended  the  rights,  and  rightful  limits, 
of  human  reason  and  of  so-called  common-sense.  Thus  Chris- 
tianit}^  became  for  them  a  revelation  adapted  only  to  the  specu- 
lative few — an  esoterical  religion,  and  absolute  only  so  far  as 
esoterical. 

The  emphasis  laid  upon  the  ethical  and  practical  aspects  of 
the  Divine  Self-revelation  in  Jesus  Christ  saved  the  great  body 
of  Christian  dogma  and  Christian  life  from  being  lifted  out  of 
the  atmosphere  of  history  and  of  universal  experience  into  the 
thin  air  of  speculations  over  the  Unknown  and  the  Unknowa- 
ble. Thus  the  view  which  Chris tianitv  takes  of  itself  as  The 
Revelation  par  excellence  keeps  the  evidence  for  itself  within 
the  limits  of  experienced  fact.  Like  that  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, the  Christian  revelation  is  preeminently  prophetic ;  it  is 
God  making  himself  known  to  man  by  a  human  life  and  voice. 
A  life  actually  lived,  and  a  voice  which  has  been  heard  by  real 
and  living  witnesses,  brings  to  mankind  messages  of  truth 
about  God  and  about  his  relations  to  the  world.  In  this  way 
all  the  prophetic  content  of  the  Old-Testament  religion  is  ful- 
filled,— not  as  a  matter  of  correspondence  to  details  of  predic- 
tion ;  the  rather  does  the  life,  work,  and  death  of  Jesus  give 
the  "  filled-full "  answer  to  the  prophetic  anticipations  and 
ideals  of  salvation.  But  the  Christian  revelation  is  more  than 
prophetic ;  it  is  eminently  historical.  In  the  case  of  the  Re- 
vealer  himself  this  characteristic  of  all  genuine  and  effective 
revelation  holds  true.  The  revealing  to  him,  of  the  truth  he 
came  to  teach,  to  manifest,  to  be,  was  progressive.  On  the 
other  hand,  however,  his  insight  appears  more  like  the  marvel- 
ous and  inexplicable  outburst  of  genius — or,  as  Jesus  himself 
regarded  it,  an  inner,  spiritual  making-known  of  God's  truth 
and  God's  will — than  like  the  product  of  prolonged  reflection 
upon  facts  carefully  observed.  As  regarded  from  this  point  of 
view,  therefore,  the  consciousness  of  Jesus  with  respect  to  its 
revelations  of  religious  truth  has  those  supreme  marks  of  in- 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  427 

spiration  which  characterize  the  mental  movements  of  the  men 
of  genius  in  every  line. 

The  Christian  revelation  has  always  been,  and  it  still  is,  a 
progressive  and  historical  affair.  On  this  matter,  the  various 
attempts  of  reflective  thinking  and  philosophical  speculation 
to  account  for  the  religious  experience  which  refers  itself  to 
the  life,  work,  and  teachings  of  Jesus,  compel  us  to  agree 
with  Harnack  ^ :  "  The  question  as  to  what  new  thing  Christ 
has  brought,  answered  by  Paul  in  the  words,  '  If  any  man  be 
in  Christ  he  is  a  new  creature,  old  things  are  passed  away,  be- 
hold all  things  are  become  new,'  has  again  and  again  been 
pointedly  put  since  the  middle  of  the  Second  Century  by  Apolo- 
gists, Theologians,  and  Religious  Philosophers,  within  and 
without  the  Church,  and  has  received  the  most  varied  answers. 
Few  of  the  answers  have  reached  the  heighth  of  the  Pauline 
confession.  But  when  one  cannot  attain  to  this  confession, 
one  ought  to  make  clear  to  one's  self  that  every  answer  which 
does  not  lie  in  the  line  of  it  is  altogether  unsatisfactory'." 

If,  then,  we  ask.  In  what  does  the  alleged  perfection  and 
finality  of  the  Christian  Revelation  consist?  we  can,  perhaps, 
give  no  more  satisfactory  answer  than  something  like  the  fol- 
lowing': A  new  ethical  and  religious  form  of  humanity,  called 
the  Kingdom  of  Redemption,  or  the  Kingdom  of  God,  was 
brought  to  clear  light  in  the  person  and  work  of  Jesus  Christ; 
and  this  in  such  a  way  as  to  afford  a  new,  and  more  nearly  per- 
fect satisfaction  to  man's  religious  needs  and  religious  longings. 
This  answer,  however,  connects  the  perfect,  final,  and  so-called 
alisolutc  Divine  Self-revelation  with  the  progress,  spread,  and 
complete  triuini)h  of  a  society  which  answers  to  man's  ethical 
and  religions  ideals.  This  Society  ia  itself  an  liistorical  devel- 
opment,— a  process  of  the  Hecoming  of  hunuinity  more  and 
more  into  the  right  relations  with  nature,  with  fellow  finite 
spirits  ;   but  especially,  and  as  including  all  the  rest,  with  that 

'  HiMtory  of  DoRmii,  I,  p.  72/. 

'Coiiipure  Schultz,  Grundriiw  dcr  Christlichcu  Apologctik,  p.   IGG/. 


428  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Being  of  the  World  which  religion  conceives  of  as  perfect 
Ethical  Spirit,  manifested  in  religious,  and  especially  in  Chris- 
tian experience,  as  the  Father  and  Redeemer  of  men. 

Attention  has  already  been  called  to  the  significance  for 
religion  of  Speech  and  of  the  Divine  revealing  Word.  If 
religious  truth  is  to  assume  clear  form,  whether  in  the  inspired 
mind  or  in  the  form  of  a  message  to  other  minds,  it  must  be 
expressed,  either  by  the  revealer  or  by  those  to  whom  the  rev- 
elation is  given,  in  articulate  language.  "  Inspiration,"  said 
Muhammad,  "  cometh  to  me  in  one  of  two  ways.  At  times 
Gabriel  speaketh  the  word  unto  me,  as  one  man  speaketh  to 
another ;  and  this  is  easy  to  understand.  At  other  times  it  is 
like  the  ringing  of  a  bell ;  it  penetrateth  my  heart  and  rendeth 
me ;  and  this  afflicteth  me  most."  In  Plutarch's  time,  the 
silence  of  the  oracles  was  "  a  common  topic  of  speculation,  of 
anxious  alarm  to  the  pious,  of  ribald  sarcasm  to  the  profane."  ^ 
Even  the  revelations  which  come  through  natural  events,  or 
through  the  higher  media  of  pure  lives  and  noble  deeds,  how- 
ever impressive  and  inspiring  in  themselves  they  may  be,  must 
somehow  be  translated  into  written,  spoken,  or  unuttered 
language,  if  they  are  to  be  "  revelations  "  in  the  fuller  meaning 
of  the  word. 

In  its  lowest  form  this  persuasion  as  to  the  value  of  words 
is  a  superstitious  belief  that  certain  magical  formulas — like  the 
incantations  of  the  ancient  Egyptians  and  Babylonians,  or  the 
*'  Honovar  "  among  the  ancient  Persians — have  a  peculiar  in- 
fluence with  the  divine  invisible  spirits.  Among  the  Persians, 
however,  the  Honovar  became  a  personification  of  the  divine 
revealing  will — a  sort  of  Logos.  In  a  more  highly  organized 
and  pretentious  form  the  same  view  originates  the  doctrine 
that  a  certain  fixed  form  of  words,  as  recorded  in  the  sacred 
writings  of  the  religion,  expresses  the  precise  truth  about  the 
Divine  Being  and  the  Divine  Will;  and  that  their  unques- 
tioning acceptance  and  use  has  some  sort  of  magical,  or  quasi' 
1  So  Oakesmith,  The  Religion  of  Plutarch,  p.  139. 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  429 

magical  influence  with  God.  All  the  greater  religions  unite 
in  this  claim  for  their  own  sacred  books.  For  example,  super- 
natural origin  is  claimed  for  certain  of  the  Confucian  classics. 
Among  them  is  a  table  of  mystical  symbols,  from  which  was 
afterwards  derived  the  diagrams  of  the  "  Book  of  Changes." 
A  monstrous  myth  was  devised  to  account  for  the  origin  of 
this  sacred  table.  But  even  in  China,  when  the  more  barbarous 
ages  were  left  behind,  it  was  holy  and  inspired  men  (Sheng 
Jen),  providentially  raised  up,  who  become  the  organs  of 
divine  revelation.  Confucius,  greatest  of  them  all,  made  no 
claim  to  infallible  authoiity  :  "  If  it  be  the  will  of  Heaven  to 
preserve  my  doctrine  for  the  benefit  of  mankind,  what  power 
can  my  enemies  have  over  it?"  or  to  supernatural  means  of  its 
derivation:  "  How  does  Heaven  Speak?  The  seasons  follow 
their  course,  and  all  things  spring  into  life, — this  is  the  lan- 
guage of  Heaven."  On  the  contrary,  however,  the  Hindu  or- 
thodoxy of  to-day  regards  the  Vedas  as  wholly  divine  and  infal- 
lible; and  orthodox  Islam  affirms  a  belief  in  the  "  uncreate 
origin"  of  the  Koran  ;  while  the  post-Reformation  dogma ^  of 
the  verbal  inspiration  and  infalHbility  of  the  Hebrew  and 
Christian  sacred  writings  is  everywhere  being  either  silently 
or  openly  withdrawn. 

Since,  however,  speech  is  always  subject  to  misconstruction 
and  misunderstiinding, — cannot,  indeed,  from  its  very  nature 
possess  the  qualities  of  an  unchanging  meaning  and  of  the 
bearer  of  infallible  trutb, — the  Divine  Word  is  quite  uniformly 
held  by  the  different  religions  to  stand  in  need  of  inspired  iu- 
terpretation.  Thus  the  Spirit,  wliich  is  the  Revealer  tiirough 
tlie  original  message,  must  continue  to  exercise  its  funntion  of 
revelation  and  inspiration  within  the  consciousness  of  every 
one  wlio  wuuld  undersUmd,  appropriate,  and  ap[)ly  this  message. 
In  this   way  the  democnitic  and  universal  nature  of  tht*  divine 

»  Tliat  the  verbal  infallibility  of  Scripture  is  a  post-Kcformation  il.)^tna 
and  not  a  Christian  or  even  a  Churt-h-Cutholic  diK'trine,  haa  been  abund- 
antly sliown.     See  Doctrine  of  Sacred  Scripture,  vol.  II,  part  III 


430  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

activities  of  revelation  and  inspiration  vindicates  itself  in  the 
experience  of  mankind.  The  priestess  at  Delphi  needed  the 
help  of  an  exegete  ;  the  infallible  Vedas  demand  the  mfallible 
Brahman  to  make  their  obscurities  clear ;  the  Sacred  Scriptures 
of  the  Christian  religion  require  an  endless  series  of  commen- 
taries, many  of  which  use  language  that  is  much  more  difficult 
to  interpret  into  experience  than  is  the  language  they  set  them- 
selves to  explain.  Over  and  above  this  chance  for  the  confu- 
sion, and  for  the  growth,  of  opinion  which  the  freedom  of  the 
Spirit  requires,  there  is  yet  more  abundant  room  provided  in 
the  dissemination  of  the  truth. 

The  demand  for  further  revelations  to  other  inspired  minds, 
in  order  that  new  truths  may  come  to  light,  or  that  old  truths 
may  be  seen  and  experienced  in  new  light,  must,  therefore,  be 
provided  for,  even  in  connection  with  the  strictest  adherence 
to  the  most  bigoted  views  of  the  verbal  inspiration  and  the 
infallible  and  final  authority  of  the  sacred  religious  writings. 
In  Hinduism,  the  Brahman  may  raise  himself  by  contempla- 
tion to  a  state  of  communion  with  the  Divine  Being  which 
gives  to  him  an  insight  superior  to  the  Vedas  themselves. 
In  all  the  ages  of  Christian  experience,  too,  believers  have 
found  some  way — either  by  resort  to  allegorizing  and  mystical 
hermeneutics,  or  by  distinguishing  between  different  classes  of 
contents  (ceremonial  and  ethical,  temporary  teachings  and  fun- 
damental truths,  etc.),  or  by  tricks  of  interpretation  and  accusa- 
tion of  corruptions  and  glosses  of  text,  or  by  the  more  intelli- 
gent and  courageous  assertion  of  the  rights  of  the  Spirit — for 
perpetuating  in  a  measure  the  spiritual  freedom  of  the  Founder 
of  the  religion  and  of  his  earlier  followers.  In  all  religions, 
moreover,  as  in  all  art,  and  even  to  no  small  extent  in  much  of 
scientific  discovery,  some  theory  of  mystical  intuition  has  been 
a  most  important  and  fruitful  method  for  the  acquisition  of 
knowledge  and  for  the  improved  grasp  of  faith  upon  its  content 
of  truth.  What  is  needed,  however,  in  religion  as  well  as  in 
science,  is  a  prolonged  and  severe  critical  testing  of  what  the 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  431 

intuition  sees  and  foresees,  by  the  accumulations  of  experienced 
facts.  On  these  terms,  all  men  of  revelation,  and  all  inspired 
seers,  whether  in  the  realm  of  science,  art,  philosophy,  or  re- 
ligion, may  believe  the  truth  of  the  claim : — 

"While  with  an  eye  made  quiet  by  the  power 
Of  harmony  and  the  deep  power  of  joy, 
We  see  into  the  life  of  things ;  " — 

or 

"But  God  has  a  few  of  us  whom  he  whispers  in  the  ear: 
The  rest  may  reason  and  welcome:  'tis  we  musicians  know." 

For  in  religion,  as  in  science,  art,  and  philosophy,  every  claim 
gets  itself  either  accepted,  modified,  or  rejected,  by  its  endur- 
ance in  histor}" ;  and  by  the  place  which  it  finds  itself  able  to 
maintain  in  the  changing  and  growing  system  of  human  beliefs, 
sentiments,  ascertained  truths,  and  institutions  built  upon 
these  attitudes  of  man's  developing  life. 

The  superiority  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  over  all 
other  religious  scriptures  consists  chiefly  in  just  this  combina- 
tion of  the  historical  qualities  of  continuity,  progressiveness, 
and  adaptability  to  changes  of  social  conditions  and  to  intellec- 
tual growth,  with  the  insights  and  foresights  of  that  "  mystical 
intuition  "  which  is  always,  and  properly,  attributed  to  the 
Spirit  of  God.  The  content  of  truth  which  these  Scriptures 
convey  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  faith  that  God  is  in  humanity, 
progressively  redeeming  it,  by  bringing  it  to  a  spiritual  like- 
ness and  union  with  Himself.  Hut  this  content  of  truth  is 
conveyed  in  tlie  form  of  a  record  which  was  itself  an  historical 
growth.  Even  in  the  finished  form,  as  record,  which  it  at- 
tiiined  at  the  completion  of  tlie  Canon  nf  the  New  Testament, 
it  did  not  escape,  and  it  was  not  designed  or  constructed  so  as 
to  escape,  from  all  further  testing  by  history  and  by  tlie  devel- 
opments of  religious  experience.  Its  alleged  liistories  will 
always  be  subject  to  the  critical  application  of  the  historical 
method,  for  the  proof  of  their  historicity.  Its  practical  maxims, 
or  ethical  generalizations,  recjuire   the   continued  exercise  of 


432  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

enligliteiied  moral  consciousness  for  their  approbation  and  their 
right  to  control  conduct.  Its  insights  into  the  world  of  invis- 
ible realities  and  spiritual  ideals,  and  its  foresights  as  to  the 
destiny  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race,  both  incite  and  culti- 
vate, and  also  appeal  for  verification  to  the  most  exalted  and 
trustworthy  religious  experiences  and  developments  of  man- 
kind. The  proof  of  the  practical  value  and  of  the  ontological 
validity  of  the  content  of  the  Cliristian  faith  is  not  dependent 
upon  details  of  past  history  ;  but  it  must  continue  to  exhibit 
itself  in  the  history  of  the  present  and  of  the  centuries  to 
come.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  scientific  induction  ;  and  yet  it  is 
constantly  subject  to  the  testing  of  universal  experience.  It 
is  not  to  be  derived  by  the  method  of  philosophical  deduction 
from  any  preconceived,  or  so-called  a  priori  conception  of  "  the 
Absolute  " ;  and  yet  it  offers  itself  ever  anew  as  an  object  for 
the  reflective  thinking  and  maturing  judgment  of  those  spec- 
ulatively inclined. 

There  is  one  species  of  the  media  of  revelation  of  which  all 
religions  make  more  or  less  use,  that  offers  peculiar  difficulties 
to  the  modern  scientific  and  philosophical  conception  of  the 
Being  of  the  World.  This  is  the  Miracle.  Indeed,  so  serious 
is  the  objection  to  the  miraculous,  and  so  heated  and  disastrous 
has  been  the  conflict  occasioned  by  its  claims,  that  the  present 
tendency  on  the  part  even  of  the  apologists  of  the  Christian 
religion  is  very  strongly  set  in  the  direction  of  dispensing 
altogether  with  the  conception.  Curiously  enough,  however, 
the  most  recent  discoveries  of  the  physical  sciences  appear  to 
be  making  a  rift  in  the  solid,  dead,  spherical  Mechanism  of 
the  eighteenth-century  Universe,  through  which  a  modified 
form  of  the  religious  idea  of  a  God-revealing  wonder  may, 
perhaps,  enter  anew. 

The  candid  student  of  man's  religious  evolution  from  the 
point  of  view  of  historical  facts  discovers,  however,  that  much 
of  the  conflict  between  science  and  faith  over  the  miraculous, 
has  been  due  to  misapprehension  or  to  over-assurance  on  both 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  433 

sides.  All  religions  have,  indeed,  made  demands  for  belief  in 
the  miraculous.  As  a  modern  Apologist  has  said :  "  Faith 
sees  miracles  everywhere  that  it  unmistakably  discerns  God's 
revelation  in  the  events  which  affect  human  interests  and  hu- 
man life.  But  it  does  not  even  raise  the  question  in  the  lower 
stages  of  development  whether  these  same  events  have  a  natural 
side  or  not."  Primitive  and  savage,  or  even  civilized  but  not 
scientifically  instructed,  man  feels  no  inconsistency  between 
the  two  points  of  view  from  which  the  same  event  may  be  con- 
sidered. Thus  the  same  phenomenon  is  now  natural, — i. «.,  or- 
dinary,— and  now  a  specially  impressive  sign  of  the  divine 
will  and  intent.  This  same  naive  and  unreflective  view  of 
the  matter  characterizes  the  writings  of  the  Old  Testament 
throughout.  Tlie  writci-s  of  these  sacred  books  liave  no  preju- 
dice against  the  miraculous.  But  it  is  absurd  to  suppose  that 
during  all  the  Old-Testament  period  the  Jews  had  little  common- 
sense,  not  to  say  scientific  information,  about  the  so-called 
natural  causes  of  storms  and  calm,  good  fortune  and  evil  for- 
tune, birth  and  death.  The  coming  of  a  child  might  indeed 
be  prayed  for,  or  accounted  an  omen  of  extraordinar}'  signifi- 
cance from  Yahweh.  But  the  formula  for  o^enealoofies  is 
frankly  naturalistic :  "  Abraham  begat  Isaac,  etc."  In  this 
very  case  of  purely  natural  generation,  the  Patriarch  and  his 
wife  are  represented  as  offending  the  Lord  by  laughing  in  his 
face,  because  they  regarded  it  as  naturally  impossible,  when  a 
son  is  promised  to  parents  of  such  an  extreme  old  age. 

Indeed,  the  established  orderliness  of  nature  is  poetically 
celebrated  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  is  made  the  type  of  the 
divine  l)ehavi()r  in  spiritual  mattei-s.  "If  ye  can  break  my 
covenant  of  the  day,  and  my  covenant  of  the  night,  and  that 
there  should  not  Ix;  day  and  niglit  in  liis  season  ;  then  may  also 
my  covenant  be  broken  with  David,  my  servant."  (Jer.  xxxiii, 
19/.)  In  that  beautiful  hymn  of  pniiso  to  Yahw«'h  (Ps.  civ), 
He  is  represented  as  coveriiii,'  hinist-lf  witli  light  lus  with  a  gar- 
ment, as  moving  on  the  winds  ;u*  on  wings,  ajs  using  the  light- 

2S 


434  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

nings  as  his  messengers ;  and  yet  his  law  is  over  all ;  for  to 
the  perpetual  redistribution  of  the  waters  He  has  "  set  a  bound 
that  they  may  not  pass  over,"  and  he  has  "  appointed  the  moon 
to  fix  the  seasons  "  ;  as  well  as  given  every  living  creature 
its  place  in  the  great  system  of  the  Universe.  So  in  the  other 
greater  religions :  for  centuries  in  China  and  India  belief  in 
miracles  and  divine  wonders  as  daily  occurrences  has  subsisted 
side  by  side  with  a  nearly  statical  social  condition  and  conser- 
vation of  the  popular  habits.  Nor  has  the  wide-spread  belief 
in  miracles  been  inconsistent  with  considerable  development 
of  astronomy,  that  most  exact  and  certain  of  the  applied 
sciences.  Even  in  the  case  of  the  most  nearly  primitive  and 
savage  peoples,  where  the  conception  of  the  extraordinary  and 
the  miraculous  is  of  the  lowest  possible  order,  the  modern  judg- 
ment is  quite  too  much  given  to  underestimating  the  current 
intelligence  with  respect  to  what  is  ordinary,  or  natural,  the 
thing  for  the  occurrence  of  which  the  causes  are  more  or  less 
completely  known.  In  general  the  seeming  incompatibility  of 
the  scientific  and  the  religious  view  is  a  comparatively  late 
development. 

It  is  when  science  puts  forward  its  theory  of  the  cosmic  sys- 
tem as  a  self-contained  and  self-explanatory  impersonal  Mech- 
anism, perfectly  and  rigidly  unyielding  in  its  adherence  to  so- 
called  fixed  laws,  that  theology  responds  with  its  conception 
of  the  miraculous  as  a  violation  of  these  laws,  as  a  breach 
somehow  made  in  the  system  by  a  personal  Will  from  without. 
And  now  begins  a  terrible  battle.  On  the  one  side,  it  is  in- 
sisted that  the  whole  body  of  science  will  be  wounded  to  the 
death,  if  God  should  be  allowed  to  shoot  a  single  arrow  at 
man's  heart  through  the  joints  of  its  rigid  and  impenetrable 
armor.  On  the  other  side,  it  is  claimed  that  the  destruction  of 
all  belief  in  the  Supernatural  and  in  the  divine  work  of  spiritual 
betterment  would  follow,  if  somehow  God  could  not  occasion- 
ally break  through,  and  by  a  species  of  violence  committed  really 
against  himself,  readjust  the  working  of  the  mechanism.  •  To 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  435 

the  philosophy  of  religion,  such  a  scientific  conception  of  the 
world  is  a  mockeiy ;  to  it,  such  a  theological  conception  of 
the  miracle  is  absurd. 

Were  this  the  place  it  could  be  shown  that  the  conception  of 
the  miraculous  as  a  violation  of  natural  law,  as  a  something  con- 
tra naturam,  is  by  no  means  the  only  ancient  and  honorable 
theological  conception.^  The  Church-Father  Augustine,  in  one 
of  his  several  treatments  of  this  subject,  considers  all  events  in 
nature  as  alike  miraculous,  because  they  are  all  alike  the  work 
of  God.  The  great  mediaeval  theologian,  Thomas  Aquinas, 
calls  miracles  those  things  done  by  God  "  beyond  the  order  of 
nature  " — that  is,  beyond  the  natural  causes  that  are  known  to 
us.  And  the  work  of  Schleiermacher,  Rothe,  and  others,  may 
truly  be  said  to  have  banished  forever  from  modern  thought 
this  view  of  the  miracle  as  a  violation  of  natural  law,  among 
otiier  views  of  the  post- Reformation  theology. 

The  conception  of  the  miracle  as  a  violation  of  natural  law 
is  from  the  very  nature  of  the  case  untenable.  There  are 
countless  events  — and  the  progress  of  modern  science  has  per- 
haps increased  rather  than  diminished  their  number — for  which 
it  is  at  present  quite  impossible  to  assign  adequate  causes,  or  to 
bring  them  into  harmony  with  other  events  under  general 
formulas  called  laws.  But  from  the  scientific  point  of  view, 
these  events  must  all  be  looked  upon  as  '^  natural,"  because 
they  are  events  in  nature.  They  are,  therefore,  potentially 
capable  of  being  at  some  future  time  located,  so  to  say,  in  the 
general  scheme  of  events,  in  accordance  with  the  methods  and 
generalizations  of  science.  Each  one  of  them  may,  however,  in 
its  relations  to  human  experience  and  to  human  history,  be  of 
such  a  nature  iis  to  have  a  very  special,  and  even  a  unique 
and  not  repeatiible  place  and  value  in  the  cosmic  system.  On 
the  other  hand,  for  the  philosophy  of  religion  there  is  no  event 
80  ordinary  or  completely  explicable  that  it  may  not  1x3  entitled 

»  For  the  proof  of  this,  see  Doctrine  of  Sacred  Scripture,  vol.  I,  part  II, 
chap.  ill. 


436  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

to  recognition  as  revealing  in  some  special  way,  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  individual  observer,  the  immanent  presence  of  the 
Divine  Being.  Indeed,  the  same  events  which  science  regards 
as  natural,  religion  is  quite  at  liberty  to  regard,  without  con- 
tradicting or  limiting  the  scientific  conception,  as  dependent 
manifestations  of  that  Supernatural  Power  and  Presence  which 
religious  faith  believes  in,  and  adores,  as  God. 

The  whole  significance  of  the  miraculous  in  the  history  of 
the  Divine  self -revelation  is,  therefore,  amply  secured  when  it 
is  regarded  as  a  natural  occurrence,  which,  by  its  special  adap- 
tation to  the  experience  of  the  observer,  is  providentially  made 
to  serve  as  a  sign,  or  reminder,  of  some  divine  thought  or  pur- 
pose. It  is  its  special  relation  to  the  experience  of  man,  and 
not  its  altogether  unique  relation  to  the  divine  will,  or  to  other 
events  and  processes  in  so-called  nature,  which  gives  its  reli- 
gious significance  and  value  to  the  miracle.  This  is  especially 
true  of  the  Biblical  miracles.  The  Old  Testament  has,  indeed, 
no  name  for  the  miraculous  which  is  not  as  readily  applicable 
to  events  that,  in  the  modern  scientific  use  of  the  word,  are 
plainly  "natural."  The  miracles  said  to  have  been  performed 
by  Jesus  all  belong  to  one  of  the  following  four  classes ;  they 
all,  therefore,  readily  conform  to  the  same  conception  of  the 
miraculous  from  the  religious  point  of  view.  They  are  either 
(1)  tokens  from  which  to  draw  a  conclusion  as  to  something 
not  perceivable  by  the  senses  ;  or  (2)  symbols  which  testify  to 
the  nature  of  the  Messianic  work;  or  (3)  witnesses  to  the 
divine  power  and  authorization  of  the  one  who  performed 
them ;  or  (4)  prophecies  which  carry  suggestive  moral  lessons 
as  to  the  present  and  the  future.^ 

The  place  of  the  so-called  miraculous  in  the  history  of  reve- 
lation is,  therefore,  always  dependent  upon  the  varying  con- 
ditions of  the  religious  experience  and  religious  development 
of  humanity.     The  attempt  of  certain  theologians  to  discredit 

1  Compare  Steinmeyer,  Die  Wunderthaten  des  Herm  in  Bezug  auf  die 
neueste  Kritik  betrachtet. 


REVELATION  AND  IXSPIRATION  437 

the  so-called  "relative"  miracle,  and  the  attempt  of  certain 
"  scientists  "  to  rule  out  miracles  altogether  on  grounds  of  an 
a  priori  conception  of  wliat  is  possible  or  impossible  in  the 
sphere  of  natural  phenomena,  are  alike  mistaken.  Tlie  feeling 
of  mystery  and  awe  in  the  presence  of  natural  phenomena  has 
been  seen  to  be  a  most  important  factor  in  the  origin  and  growth 
of  religious  experience,  and  of  the  religious  view  of  the  World. 
Modern  science  has,  in  the  thought  of  the  most  thoughtful  of 
its  own  devotees,  done  nothing  to  diminish,  but  much  to  in- 
crease and  deepen  this  feeling.  A  relative  necessity  for  the 
miracle  in  the  historical  and  progressive  Divine  Self-revelation 
may,  therefore,  well  enough  be  admitted.  Especially  in  the 
lower  stages  of  race-culture,  and  for  the  man  wlio  is  unable  to 
receive  and  hold  steadily  the  general  truths  and  ideals  of  the 
race's  higher  religious  experience,  any  wonder,  or  portent,  of  a 
concrete  physical  kind  may  become  an  important  means  of 
making  God  known.  Such  an  event  arrests  attention,  arouses 
feelings  of  dependence  and  awe,  demands  and  effectuates  the 
entrance  into  consciousness  of  the  invisible  and  intangible 
potencies  that  so  make  or  mar  the  success  of  human  life.  In 
a  word,  the  miraculous  stirs  up  the  crude,  but  most  primary  and 
indispensable  elements  out  of  which  the  evolution  of  the  higher 
forms  of  religious  belief,  sentiment,  and  practice  are  to  issue. 

That  so-called  miracles  have  in  the  past,  in  the  case  of  all 
religions  not  excepting  tlie  Christian  religion,  actually  been 
powerful  means  for  enforcing  the  conviction  of  the  Reality 
corresponding  to  the  subjective  content  of  faith,  is  a  matter  of 
indul)itiible  historical  fact.  All  the  erroi*s,  imperfections,  and 
even  encounigement  to  degrading  sui)erstitions  and  immoral 
practices,  wliich  have  doubtless  accompanied  this  historical 
process  do  not  destroy  the  truth  of  the  main  fact.  Krroi"s, 
impj'rfcctions,  and  degrading  superstitions,  and  immoral  prac- 
tices, have  l)een  connect<?d  with  all  forms  <tf  the  evolution  of 
humanity.  Neither  science,  nor  art,  nor  politics,  nor  industry 
has   Ikm-u    free   from  tluMu.      Man's    rcli'^ious  evolution,   if  we 

C5 


438  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

could  consider  it  apart  from  the  other  forms  of  his  evolution, 
has  probably  been  as  little  tainted  and  corrupted  in  these  ways 
as  have  any  of  these  other  forms.  The  blame  of  it  all  can 
scarcely  be  laid  upon  human  credulity  with  respect  to  the 
religious  miracle.  Priests,  oracle-mongers,  and  medicine-men 
have  not  deluded  and  corrupted  the  people  more  to  their  harm 
than  have  the  politicians  and  the  ''  captains  of  industry "  ; 
probably  not  more  than  the  artists  and  even  the  so-called  men 
of  science. 

With  a  rising  estimate  of  the  value  of  ethico-religious  truth, 
and  with  a  more  rational  conception  of  God,  of  his  relations 
to  the  World,  and  of  the  real  nature  and  significance  of  reli- 
gious revelation  and  inspiration,  the  place  of  the  miracle  be- 
comes less  important  for  the  religious  evolution  of  humanity. 
It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  modern  Christianity,  where  it  con- 
tinues at  all  to  believe  in  its  own  miraculousness,  receives  the 
essential  content  of  truth,  not  on  account  of,  but  the  rather  in 
spite  of,  the  record  of  miracles.  There  are  not  wanting  signs, 
however,  that  this  attitude  is  an  extreme  concession  to  a  scien- 
tific conception  of  the  world  which  is,  even  in  the  minds  of 
those  who  hold  fast  to  the  scientific  standpoints  in  the  most 
unprejudiced  and  liberal  fashion,  itself  only  partial,  lacking  in 
comprehensiveness,  and  destined  soon  to  yield  to  some  larger 
and  more  spiritual  conception.  "  Nature  "  appears  to  modern 
science  so  much  more  grand,  subtile,  shrewd  in  resources,  and 
marvelously  wonder-working ;  she  is  ready  always  to  move  on 
and  even  to  overstep,  in  her  march  toward  her  goal,  the  limits 
which  she  seemed  previously  to  have  irrevocably  set  for  her- 
self !  From  her  fertile  womb  what  incomprehensible  but  sig- 
nificant new  products  may  not  at  any  moment  come  forth  ? 
The  life  which  nature  is,  in  fact,  momently  producing  is,  as 
to  its  causes,  limits,  and  possibilities  of  development,  so  full  of 
hitherto  inexplicable  riddles,  that  we  will  not  rate  in  too  lowly 
fashion  the  potentialities  now  concealed,  but  ready  to  be  re- 
vealed at  any  moment  to  the  insight  of  the  true  seer. 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  439 

The  persistent  belief  in  miracles  is  a  fact  of  no  small  signifi- 
cance. And  since  miracles  are  not  to  be  regarded  as  violations 
of  the  laws  of  nature  so-called,  or  as  interferences  with  the 
established  divine  order,  their  reality  and  their  value  are  not 
discredited  by  man's  growing  ability  to  explain  phenomena 
from  the  scientific  point  of  view.  The  awakening  of  the  hu- 
man mind  to  the  presence  of  that  Spirit  on  whose  Life  man's 
life  depends,  and  to  the  belief  that  this  same  Spirit  is  the  il- 
lumining and  redeeming  One  whose  help  for  his  salvation 
man  everywhere  and  always  needs,  is  a  divinely  induced  event 
in  every  age.  The  means  of  this  awakening  may  change  from 
age  to  age.  There  was  truth  in  the  poetical  expression  of  Jean 
Paul  Richter :  "  Miracles  on  earth  are  nature  in  heaven.'' 

Since,  however,  every  miracle  is  a  particular,  definite  event 
in  nature,  the  reality  of  every  alleged  miracle  is  a  matter  of 
evidence.  Each  alleged  occurrence  of  tlie  seemingly  miracu- 
lous order  raises,  tlierefore,  a  question  of  fact.  This  question 
can  never  be  settled,  in  a  perfectly  definite  and  finally  satis- 
factory way,  either  by  a  reference  of  science  to  the  domination 
of  so-called  "  general  laws,"  or  by  a  reference  of  theology  to 
its  confidence  in  the  generally  miraculous  nature  of  the  facts 
and  trutlis  that  constitute  the  content  of  religious  faith.  No 
particular  fact  is  ever  to  be  explained  by  general  laws,  even 
when  admittedly  and  incontestably  coming  under  those  laws. 
Many  events  which  have  been  contested  or  derided  in  the  name 
of  established  laws  of  nature,  have  subsequently  vindicated 
themselves  as  facts.  **  What  we  call  the  '  laws  of  nature  '  must 
vary  according  to  our  frequent  new  experiences"  (Virchow). 
''Science  is  a  foe  to  systematic  negation"  (Charcot).  Nor 
can  we  avoid  noticing  tlie  extraordinary  credulity  of  many 
who  promptly  deny  tlie  possibility  of  an  allogeil  fact  when  it  is 
called  ''a  miracle";  but  who  are  entirely  ready  to  credit  the 
same  mysterious  fact,  if  you  will  only  consent  to  call  it  **8ul)- 
conscious,"  *'  hypnotic,"  ''  telepathii',"  or  what  not.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  greater  nuiiil)er  of  alleged  miracles,  even  when 


440  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

before  examination  they  appeared  to  have  sufficient  evidence 
in  their  belialf,  have  failed  to  establisli  themselves  as  facts. 
This  experience  reasonably  creates  the  cautious  and  non- 
committal attitude  of  the  wise  man  toward  the  seemingly  mirac- 
ulous, whether  deemed  important  to  confirm  the  religious 
beliefs  of  humanity,  or  not ;  and  this  is  not  because  he  is  ready 
on  a  priori  grounds  to  pronounce  the  alleged  facts  impossible, 
but  because  he  has  learned  how  untrustworthy  is  most  of  the 
evidence  that  is  claimed  in  support  of  such  alleged  facts. 

All  this,  however,  puts  no  intolerable — not  to  say  unreason- 
able— burden  upon  religious  faith.  Nor  does  it,  on  the  other 
hand,  convict  of  unreason  faith's  attitude  toward  the  miracu- 
lous in  general,  or  toward  any  miracle  in  particular.  The  same 
thing  is  constantly  coming  to  the  front  in  the  conclusions  of 
modern  science  itself.  Have  we  not  had  the  believers  in  spon- 
taneous generation  convicted  of  seeing  new  living  forms  in 
shreds  of  cloth,  or  of  detecting  the  origin  of  all  life  in  some 
Urschleim  that  was  not  living  at  all  ?  Is  not  the  whole  history 
of  biological  evolution  paved  with  corrected  mistakes  in  matters 
of  fact — mistakes  due  chiefly  to  the  prejudices  and  credulity  of 
the  observers?  Is  the  marvel  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus,  in 
itself  considered  as  mere  fact,  any  more  difficult  to  comprehend 
than — to  compare  mysteries  great  from  the  religious  point  of 
view  with  mysteries  great  from  the  scientific  point  of  view — 
the  new  life  of  the  impregnated  ovum  from  which  Aristotle 
came  ?  Is  the  testimony  of  the  witnesses  to  this  marvel  any 
more  conflicting  than  that  of  those  who  bear  witness  to  the 
self-regeneration  of  the  cut  nerve-fiber?  Doubtless  the  men  of 
faith,  not  only  in  religion  but  in  all  other  matters  of  evidence 
that  needs  sifting  and  can  never  amount  to  more  than  a  certain 
degree  of  probability,  will  continue  to  credit  as  fact  what  those 
who  have  not  the  same  faith  will  continue  to  doubt  or  to  deny. 
In  the  large  way,  and  in  the  long  run,  the  growth  of  human 
experience,  reflected  upon  in  its  totality,  will  reveal  such  truth 
as  men  may  hope  to  know.     But  in  both  science  and  religion, 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  441 

there  will  be  no  lack  of  unexplained  mysteries  of  fact  until  the 
end  of  time. 

There  are  certain  considerations,  however,  which  the  believer 
in  the  superior  credibility  of  the  Biblical  miracles  may  reason- 
ably urge  in  his  own  behalf.  There  is,  first  of  all,  even  in  the  al- 
leged miraculous  events  of  the  Old-Testament  narratives  a  cer- 
tain commendable  moderateness,  which  in  comparison  with  the 
example  of  all  the  other  most  important  sacred  writings  of 
the  different  religions  may  be  called  a  marked  paucity  of  the 
miraculous.  Moreover,  if  we  refrain  in  the  interests  of  sound 
scholarship,  and  in  sympathy  with  the  Oriental  way  of  teach- 
ing moral  and  religious  truth,  from  regarding  narratives  like 
that  of  the  book  of  Jonah,  for  example,  as  making  any  claim  to 
an  historical  character,  we  may  note  a  lack  of  exuberance  and 
wildness  about  these  alleged  miraculous  happenings. 

It  can  scarcely  be  questioned,  in  the  second  place,  that  from 
the  standpoint  of  a  rational  faith  the  intimate  connection  of 
many  of  these  natural  wonders  with  tlie  orderly,  historical  de- 
velopment of  that  ethical  and  religious  truth  which  the  world 
owes  to  Judaism,  is  favorable  to  their  historical  credibility. 
That  is  to  say,  the  place  which  the  miraculous  takes  in  an  or- 
ganism of  revelation,  for  the  mind  which  accepts  the  truth  thus 
revealed  respecting  God's  spiritual  relations  to  tlie  race,  lends 
an  important  support  to  the  claim  of  its  reasonableness ;  in  tliis 
way  it  also  aids  in  removing  antecedent  objections  to  the  au- 
thenticity of  the  record  of  alleged  miracles.  To  reason  thus 
does  not  necessarily  contravene  the  accepted  scientific  method 
of  historical  research.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  itaelf  an  example 
of  the  use  of  that  method.  Physical  science,  as  soon  as  the 
absurd  (;()nc(4)ti()n  of  (iod  *Wiolatiiig"  natural  law  or  "  inter- 
ferinjj  "  with  tlie  world-order  is  withdrawn,  hiis  no  more  riijht 
to  assume  dictatoiiihip  over  tlio  history  of  the  Divine  Self- 
revelation  than  over  any  other  species  or  aspect  of  the  histor- 
ical evoluti(jn  of  mankind.  Tlie  aljstractions  of  chemistry, 
physics,   and  biology,  cannot  sulhce  to  dcmunstraLo  what,  by 


442  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

way  of  concrete  individual  fact,  has  happened  in  the  past ; 
much  less  can  they  show  to  the  religious  consciousness  that  it 
is  mistaken  in  interpreting  the  accomplished  fact  as  a  sign, 
token,  or  symbol  of  some  true  thought,  or  holy  choice  of  God. 
The  entire  religious  doctrine  of  the  relations  of  the  world  of 
things  and  selves  to  the  Divine  Being  interprets  them  all  as 
factors  in  an  interconnected  but  dependent  manifestation. 

To  Christian  faith,  however,  it  is  the  relation  of  the  alleged 
miraculous  occurrences  recorded  in  the  Biblical  writings  to 
Jesus  Christ,  as  preeminently  and  uniquely  the  revealer  of  re- 
ligious truth,  which  is  the  most  potent  influence  in  authenti- 
cating these  occurrences.  Jesus  himself  never  appears  as  a 
miracle-monger ;  in  no  instance  does  he  work  a  wonder  for  its 
own  sake,  or  for  the  sake  of  the  applause,  or  even  of  the  con- 
fidence, which  it  might  be  expected  to  win  to  himself.^  The 
miracles  he  is  said  to  have  wrought  seem,  for  the  most  part,  to 
flow  from  his  personality  with  a  certain  perfect  naturalness. 
And  if  the  attitude  of  faith  in  this  personality,  as  somehow 
uniquely  divine,  is  needed  in  order  to  accept  the  truthfulness 
of  the  narrative  of  his  miraculous  deeds ;  on  the  other  hand,  a 
certain  attitude  of  reserve,  or  even — if  it  seems  a  better  word — 
of  agnosticism^  is  more  truly  scientific  here  than  is  the  position 
which  boldly  issues,  in  the  face  of  the  modern  mysteries  of 
both  physical  and  psychical  phenomena,  a  blunt  and  unqualified 
denial  to  them  all.^ 

As  to  the  modus  operandi  of  revelation  and  inspiration  little 
can  be  added  with  assurance  to  what  has  already  been  said. 
That  most  of  the  religious  truth,  of  which  the  race  has  become 
possessed,  has  arisen  and  developed  through  the  reflection  of  a 
few  minds  upon  man's  experience  with  things  and  with  his- 

1  "Faire  des  miracles  ctait  une  chose  d  laquelle  il  se  refusait  ohstinement, 
ce  qui  est  ridicule  d  un  sorcier.  Ne  soyez  -pas  sorcier,  mais  si  vous  Vetes, 
faites  votre  metier." 

2  On  miracles  in  general,  and  on  the  Christian  miracles  in  particular,  see 
Harnack,  What  is  Christianity?  pp.  26 ff. 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  443 

torical  events,  is  undeniable  historical  fact.  The  naturalistic 
way  of  explaining  this  fact  speaks  of  *'  suggestions,"  *'  influ- 
ences," '*  reasons,"  etc. ; — as  though  they  somehow  had  an  ex- 
istence external  to  human  consciousness  and  operated  upon  it 
as  true  causes  for  the  production  of  its  insights  into,  and 
inferences  about,  religious  truth.  This  way  of  speaking  has 
its  rights  and  its  advantages.  From  another  point  of  view, 
however,  not  only  the  religious  seer,  teacher,  and  philosopher, 
but  also  the  scientific  observer,  if  only  his  attitude  toward 
human  experience  be  that  of  a  devout  mind,  has  always  been 
ready  to  ascribe  the  gift  of  truth  to  God,  and  the  power  to  ap- 
prehend, receive,  and  interpret  truth  to  the  "  inspiration  of  the 
Almighty."  This  conviction  of  personal  and  spiritual  relations 
between  man,  as  a  discoverer  and  knower  of  the  truth,  and 
God  as  the  Revealer  and  Inspirer  of  man,  is  too  deeply  set  in 
human  experience  to  be  easily  eradicated.  The  "  men  of 
revelation  " — with  their  superior  insights  and  cognitions  in 
science,  art,  philosophy,  morals,  and  politics,  as  well  as  in  reli- 
gion— have  uniformly  believed  themselves  to  be  divinely  helped 
to  "read  after"  Him  'Hhe  thoughts  of  God." 

The  revelations  and  inspirations  of  the  Almighty,  however, 
have  \jeen  too  democratic  to  be  confined  to  the  select  few. 
Great  up  ward-mo  vement«  in  tlie  religious  development  of  the 
race, — like  that  which  extended  from  the  seventli  to  the  fifth 
century  B.  c,  and  not  only  gave  to  the  world  such  names  as 
Isaiah,  Pythagoras,  Zoroaster,  HucUlha,  Confucius,  and  Lao-tse, 
but  also  effected  a  religious  revolution  among  millions  of  hu- 
m;in  kind  ;  or  Hke  that  which  surrounded  on  both  sides  for  a 
century  or  two  tlie  appearance  of  Christ ;  or,  again,  like  that 
whicli  swept  over  the  wliole  Western  WorUl  and  brought  alxnit 
a  '*  Reformation  "  par  exceUenre : — great  upward  movements  in 
the  religious  development  of  the  nice  bear  witness  at  intervals 
to  the  enormous  and  epocli-making  energy  of  the  Divine 
Spirit.  The  aj)pearance  is  as  though,  after  8luml)ering  and 
slowly  gathering  itself,   this  divine  energy  buret   fortli  with 


Ui  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

increased  violence  of  spiritual  uplift  upon  humanity.  And, 
indeed,  in  spite  of  all  that  may  justly  be  said  to  the  contrary, 
it  always  has  been  and  still  is  Religion  which  is  *'  The  Great 
Psychic  Lift  of  the  Race."  ^ 

This  work  of  revelation  and  inspiration  from  the  Infinite 
Spirit  within  the  finite  spirit  of  the  individual  man  can,  in 
some  sort,  be  put  to  an  experimental  testing.  And  if  any 
seeker  after  truth  thinks  himself  to  have  tried  the  experiment 
and  failed,  or  to  have  proved  a  negative  experimentally,  he 
may  quite  properly  remind  himself  anew  of  the  conditions  on 
which  all  successful  scientific  experimentation  is  known  to  de- 
pend. Let,  then,  any  human  soul  voluntarily  remove  all  ob- 
stacles from  prejudice,  or  from  the  desire  to  exclude  the  free 
and  fuller  manifestations  of  the  revealing  and  inspiring  Spirit 
of  God.  With  a  mind  voluntarily  opened  to  an  appreciation 
of  those  ideals,  in  whose  ontological  and  practical  value  the 
race  has  so  persistently  believed,  let  one  reflect  upon  the  prob- 
lems of  human  life  and  human  destiny  in  their  manifold  rela- 
tions to  the  mystery  of  the  cosmic  forces  and  processes.  Let 
the  higher  lights  come  down  to  illumine  the  level  of  the  spirit's 
better  impulses  and  strivings.  Let  the  profounder  aspirations 
raise  these  impulses  and  strivings  beyond  their  customary 
heights.  Let  heaven  and  earth  be  wooed  to  come  together  for 
at  least  a  momentary  embrace.  Tear  away  the  mask  of  the 
phenomena  in  whose  frowns  and  smiles  and  grimaces  our  daily 
interests  are  so  absorbed ;  and  now  behold !  if  possible,  the 
Reality  of  things.  Some  new  truth,  divinely  wrought,  about 
that  Reality;  some  new  confidence  in  its  supreme  value  as 
serving  with  its  Will  to  accomplish  a  "  far-off  divine  event " 
in  the  interests  of  Truth,  Righteousness,  and  Blessedness ; 
some  added  energy  and  purity  of  spirit  in  the  daily  strife  with 
weakness,  suffering,  and  temptation  ; — all  this  will  surely  come 
to  the  soul  which  thus  prepares  itself.     And  whence  does  it 

1  A  phrase  used  in  Ideals  of  Science  and  Faith,  in  the  Essay  by  Victor 
V.  Branford,  called  "A  Sociological  Approach  toward  Unity." 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  445 

come  ?  The  answer  of  the  growing  religious  experience  of 
mankind  is  this :  It  comes  from  the  llevealer  and  Inspirer  of 
all  Truth,  Righteousness,  and  Blessedness  ;  and  He  is  our  God. 

The  plienomena  of  religious  revelation  and  inspiration  are  the 
crowning  proof  of  the  truth  of  the  religious  conception  of  God 
as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  '*  The  abiding  presence  of  the  Super- 
natural in  nature  is  necessary  to  account  for  nature  and  her 

process  of  development The  abiding  presence  of  the 

Supernatural  in  consciousness  and  in  human  history — as  the 
object  and  source  of  religion,  as  the  giver  of  moral  and  reli- 
gious truth,  light,  and  life,  as  the  eternal  and  quickening  Holy 
Spirit — must  also  be  accounted  necessary  to  explain  the  ethical 
and  spiritual  progress  of  humanity.  But  these  fundamental 
facts  do  not  exclude  the  further  fact  of  a  special  and  more 
truly  creative  activity  within  certain  more  definite  fields  of 
human  consciousness  and  human  history.  Such  a  special  crea- 
tive activity  is  exercised  in  bringing  to  the  race,  through  pro- 
phetic and  inspired  souls,  certain  great  and  preeminently  new 
moral  and  religious  truths  concerning  the  being  and  work  of 
God  in  history  as  the  Redeemer  of  mankind."  ^ 

In  estimating  and  explaining  the  phenomena  uf  religious 
revelation  and  inspiration,  the  historical  qualities  of  a  certain 
continuity  and  gradualness,  diversified  by  epochs  and  even  by 
apparent  revolutions,  are  never  to  be  excluded  from  tiie  ac- 
count. In  and  through  his  experience  with  God — an  experi- 
ence which  correctly  and  reasonably  refei-s  itself  to  God  as  its 
source — man  grows  in  the  knowledge  and  spiritual  likeness  of 
God.  The  experience  is  never  free  from  defects,  fragmentary 
and  erroneous  elements,  l^linding  and  misleading  factoi^s  ;  l)Ut 
in  all  these  respects  religion  is  not  different  from  science,  pliil- 
osophy,  politics,  or  art.  Reliyion^  which  is  itm'Jj'  an  historicul 
development^  in  aho  a  progregsive  Self-revelation — through  a 
Spiritual  Prt'Sf/tce.  immanent  in  all  humanitif^but e»penally  ener- 

*  Quoted  subsUiiitially  vls  found  in  the  Doctrine  of  Sacred  Scripture,  II, 
p.  316. 


446  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

getic  in  certain  individual  spirits — of  the  perfect  Ethical  Spirit 
of  God. 

Neither  a  naturalistic  science,  which  would  deny  God's  work 
of  revelation  and  inspiration  altogether,  nor  a  super-naturalistic 
theology,  which  refuses  to  recognize  the  physical  and  historical 
limitations  of  this  work,  is  tenable  in  view  of  all  the  phenom- 
ena. The  conception  of  God  in  humanity  furnishes  the  only 
key  to  an  understanding  of  their  nature,  their  source,  and 
their  significance. 

That  the  experience  of  man  with  his  environment  of  things 
and  selves,  and  with  his  own  development  in  history,  may, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  one  who  takes  the  attitude  of  piety, 
be  considered  as  warranting  the  belief  that  the  World  is  a  de- 
pendent manifestation  of  the  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  of  God,  has 
been  our  contention  throughout  all  this  Part  of  our  treatise. 
But  our  thought  must  now  be  called  back  to  the  proviso  which 
the  contention  includes.  If  one  looks  upon  the  World  with 
that  spirit  of  filial  piety  which  is  itself  subjective  religion, 
one  may  rationally  interpret  the  World  in  this  way.  But  the 
attitude  of  faith  itself  is  not  a  purely  scientific  attitude  ;  sci- 
ence, as  such,  is  powerless  to  bestow  the  spirit  of  religion.  Nor 
can  it  be  denied  that  the  religious  attitude  constantly  tends 
somewhat  strongly  to  come  into  conflict  with  certain  of  the 
beginning  principles,  and  certain  of  the  terminal  conclusions, 
of  the  scientific  attitude.  The  reason  for  this  tendency  was 
partially  disclosed  in  the  treatment  given  to  science  and  reli- 
gion, and  to  the  psychological  and  historical  relations  of  the 
two.  In  the  progress,  however,  of  that  reconciliation  which 
the  reflective  thinking  of  philosophy  endeavors  to  accomplish, 
the  lines  drawn  upward  from  these  two  points  of  view  may  be 
seen  to  converge.  Science,  with  all  its  progress,  is  not  now 
able,  and  never  will  be  able,  to  comprehend,  to  constitute,  or 
to  control,  the  entire  experience  of  man.  Its  best  established 
formulas  and  principles  are  partial,  in  respect  of  their  power 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  447 

both  to  interpret  and  to  direct  human  life  ;  and  also  to  satisfy 
completely  the  aspirations  and  ideals  of  the  human  souL 

Religion,  too,  in  all  its  more  definitely  established  views  and 
practices,  if  these  are  divorced  from  or  opposed  to  the  interests 
of  science,  art,  and  philosophy,  represents  only  partially  the  in- 
terests, the  cognitive  and  affective  advances,  and  the  noblest 
ideals,  of  humanity.  Whether  there  is  not  a  yet  higher  point 
of  view,  from  which  all  these  sides  of  human  experience  may 
be  disclosed  in  organic  unity,  and  where  all  human  history  and 
human  ideals  appear  merged  in  the  realization  by  man  of  the 
fullness  of  the  Life  that  is  in  God,  is  a  question  upon  which 
neither  technical  science  nor  religious  dogma  and  ceremonial 
can  throw  any  clear  light.  When  the  Unity  of  the  Spirit,  as 
pervasive  of  all  things  and  of  all  men,  and  of  man  in  the  to- 
tality of  his  interests  and  ideals,  has  completely  manifested 
itself ;  then  both  the  theoretical  and  the  practical  differences 
of  science  and  religion  will  be  completely  reconciled. 

But  if  the  picture  of  the  cosmic  existences,  forces,  and  proc- 
esses, which  the  modern  physico-chemical  and  biological  sci- 
ences have  formed,  does  not  everywhere  coincide  line  for  line 
with  the  picture  of  this  same  Cosmos  drawn  in  the  interests  of 
religious  faith,  it  cannot  be  said  that  the  one  either  wholly  ob- 
scures or  obliterates  the  other.  Doubtless  much  of  man's  ex- 
perience can  be  partially  explained  as  though  it  were  of  a 
"self-contained,"  *' self-exphmatoiy,"  and  "self-maintaining" 
Mechanical  System.  But  much  of  it,  even  in  the  realm  of  fact 
and  of  the  ways  of  the  observed  behavior  of  things  and  selves, 
cannot  be  thus  explained.  Nor,  if  tlie  positive  sciences  should 
comi)letely  succeed  in  their  ever  laudable  effort  to  regard  all 
existences  and  their  changing  relations  Jis  explicable  from  tlio 
scientific  point  of  view,  would  the  religious  view  of  the  World 
and  of  its  relations  to  the  Object  of  religious  faith,  be  either 
disproved  or  essentially  altered.  For  religion,  conservative  as 
its  particular  Ixjliefs  are,  liiis  also  a  great  gift  of  adaptibility. 
This  has  been  abundantly  shown  by  tlio  history  of  the  evolu- 


448  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

tion  of  religion.  This  human  interest  can  survive,  and  keep 
its  ideals  unchanged,  after  learning  from  science  all  the  many 
valuable  lessons  of  method  and  of  fact  which  science  has  to 
impart.  "  Even  so,  as  you  have  taught  me,"  religion  can  say 
to  science,  "  do  I  recognize  with  a  worshipful  and  grateful 
spirit  this  system  of  cosmic  existences,  forces  and  processes, 
which  you  describe  and  explain,  as  a  dependent  manifestation 
of  the  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  of  God." 

But  science,  in  the  narrower  meaning  of  that  word,  is  not 
the  whole  of  human  experience ;  it  is  not  even  the  whole  of 
cognitive  experience.  The  ideals  of  art  and  of  morality  impel 
men  to  a  view,  and  philosophy  introduces  them  to  a  reasoned 
doctrine,  of  the  Universe,  which  in  many  most  important  char- 
acteristics coincides  with  the  view  and  the  doctrine  of  religion 
itself.  Art  and  morality  can  never  look  upon  the  Cosmos,  or 
upon  man's  relations  to  the  Cosmos,  as  satisfactorily  stated  and 
explained  in  terms  of  mechanism.  Art  and  morality,  either 
instinctively  or  by  elaborate  processes  of  ratiocination,  come 
to  regard  the  Being  of  the  World  as  Spirit  revealing  Itself  to 
the  spirit  of  man.  In  art,  the  revelation  is  significant  of  what 
the  world  ought  to  be,  because  this  Spirit  is  a  Spirit  of  Beauty ; 
in  morality,  it  is  the  revelation  of  what  man  ought  to  be  be- 
cause this  Spirit  is  a  Spirit  of  Goodness  and  of  Truth.  All 
revelation  is  a  source  of  inspiration,  too ;  for  the  recognition  of 
this  spiritual  nature  of  the  World  inflames,  vivifies,  greatens, 
purifies,  and  ennobles,  that  spirit  of  humanity  within  which  it 
takes  place.  This  is  essentially  the  same  process  which  reli- 
gious faith  carries  to  a  higher  stage. 

And  always,  in  some  form  and  to  some  degree,  when  the  re- 
flective thinking  of  the  '*  men  of  revelation  " — whether  in 
science,  morals,  art,  or  religion — considers  fairly  and  develops 
fruitfully  the  ontological  meaning  and  value  of  these  ideals  of 
humanity,  philosophy  gives  its  authorization  to  the  conception 
which  they  suggest  and  embody,  of  the  Being  of  the  World. 
That  which  the  race  experiences,  and  which  the  positive  sci- 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION  U9 

ences  partially  reduce  to  formulas  that  state  the  observed  rela- 
tions of  the  phenomena,  is  indeed  the  manifestation  to  finite 
spirits,  in  a  process  of  historical  evolution,  of  the  Reality  of 
Infinite  Spirit.  But  religion,  with  an  assured  confidence  in 
its  own  experience,  which  is  also  an  important  form  of  the  evo- 
lution of  humanity,  extends  its  Ideals  onward  beyond  the  place 
where  art  and  morality  feel  obliged  to  stop.  It  thus  affirms  its 
conviction  that  this  very  process  of  evolution  itself  must  be 
regarded  as  a  manifestation  in  history  of  the  divine  purpose  to 
bring  humanity  into  a  blessed  state  of  spiritual  union  and  com- 
munion with  that  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  whom  religion  calls 
God. 

29 


PART   VI 

THE   DESTINY   OF   MAN 


"Ldght  is  sown  for  the  righteous,  and  gladness  for  the  upright  in  heart." 

Psalmist. 

"In  my  Father's  house  are  many  mansions;  .  .  .  .  I  come  again,  and  will 
receive  you  unto  myself;  that  where  I  am,  there  ye  may  be  also."  Jesus. 

"He  who  has  knovm  me  as  the  Lord  of  sacrifice  and  of  penance,  the  mighty 
Ruler  of  all  the  worlds  and  the  Lover  of  all  beings,  goeth  to  peace." 

Bhagavadgita. 

"Dare  to  look  up  to  God  and  say,  'Make  use  of  me  for  the  future  as  thou  wilt. 
I  am  of  the  same  mind.     I  am  one  with  Thee.'  "  Epictetus. 

"Till  this  truth  thou  knowest; 

'Die  to  live  again' — 

Stranger-like   thou  goest 

In  a  world  of  pain."  Goethe» 


PART   VI 

THE   DESTINY  OF   MAN 


CHAPTER  XLHI 

THE   FUTURE   OF   RELIGION 

The  final  stage  of  the  attempt  which  philosophy  makes  to 
test  critically  and  to  refine  the  conceptions,  beliefs,  and  prac- 
tices of  religion,  brings  us  face  to  face  with  the  third  of  those 
questions  into  which,  according  to  Kant,  the  rational  nature  of 
man  desires  to  gain  insight.  This  question,  as  he  gives  expres- 
sion to  it,  asks:  "  What  may  I  hope  for?"  Expressed  in  a 
way  to  heighten  its  significance,  it  becomes  an  inquiry  into  the 
destiny  of  man,  both  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race.  Since, 
however,  like  every  question  of  expectation  or  hope,  it  con- 
cerns the  future,  and  in  its  most  important  iispects,  a  far- 
distant  and  only  dimly  discernible  future,  the  answer  cannot  be 
demonstrative,  whether  as  afforded  by  science  or  by  the  faith  of 
religion.  The  most  trustworthy  answer  possible  can  only  serve 
to  estiiblish  a  rational  hope.  Like  every  other  similar  ques- 
tion also,  this  reach  of  expectation  or  reasoned  confidence  into 
the  future,  must  ground  itself  in  human  L'X[)erience  belonging 
to  the  present  and  to  the  past.  From  the  standpoint  of  religion, 
liuman  destiny  is  dependent  in  a  large,  if  not  absolute  wa}', 
upon  the  future  of  religion  itself.  Our  first  inciuiry  is,  then, 
briefly  sUited  this:  "What,  in  view  of  man's  religious  life  and 
develo[)ment  in  the  piust,  and  of  his  present  religious  nature 
and  condition,  is  a  most  reasonable  hope  with  regard  to  the 
Future  of  Religion  ?  " 


454  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

To  this  inquiry,  as  a  search  after  a  reasonable  hope,  two  an- 
swers are  possible  and  wortliy  of  serious  consideration.  These 
may  be  stated  as  follows  :  (1)  In  the  future  development  of 
humanity,  the  other  factors  and  interests  of  race-culture  will 
displace  religion  altogether  and  will  render  its  function  inert 
and  unnecessary ;  or  (2)  Religion  will  always  remain  an  im- 
portant and  even  indispensable  factor  and  interest  in  the  ad- 
vancing culture  of  the  race,  and  it  will  itself  be  so  improved 
and  developed  as  to  render  it  worthy  and  efficacious  in  the  bet- 
ter and  wider  performance  of  its  peculiar  function.  Or,  to 
state  these  conflicting  hopes  in  another  form  :  The  highest 
social  good  of  humanity  will  come  to  exclude  religion  as  some- 
thing unessential  and  passe ;  or.  The  highest  social  good  of 
humanity  will  not  only  include  an  improved  religious  condition, 
but  will  be  realized  as  essentially  connected  with,  if  not  ab- 
solutely dependent  upon,  the  religious  development  of  the 
race. 

Before  considering  these  two  forms  of  an  essentially  opti- 
mistic view  of  the  future  of  mankind,  it  is  well  to  glance  at 
several  other  possible  attitudes  of  mind  toward  the  problem, 
*'  What  of  the  future  of  religion  ?  " — none  of  which,  however, 
can  be  called  "  reasonable  hopes  "  by  the  student  of  the  philos- 
ophy of  religion.  The  essentially  optimistic  view  of  man's 
progress  in  race-culture  may  be  opposed  in  toto  by  a  view  that 
is  essentially  pessimistic.  In  this  contrast  between  Optimism 
and  Pessimism,  the  terms  are  used  in  their  most  nearly  absolute 
significance.  But  the  pessimistic  as  well  as  the  optimistic  view 
of  religion's  future  may  itself  be  either  religious  or  irreligious. 
In  either  case,  however,  it  is  held  as  a  fundamental  tenet  that 
the  race  is  going  to  the  bad.  In  the  one  case,  only  a  remnant 
will  be  saved ;  for  the  future  triumph  of  religion  is  in  retribu- 
tion rather  than  in  redemption.  In  the  other  case,  not  even  a 
remnant  will  be  saved  ;  for  the  machine  is  grinding  out  poorer 
and  poorer  stuff,  and  is  itself  getting  more  and  more  worn  out. 
Now  whatever  may  be  said  in  the  name  either  of  theology  or 


THE  FUTURE  OF  RELIGION  455 

of  science  in  support  of  these  ultimately  pessimistic  views,  they 
can  scarcely  satisfy  any  philosophical  inquiry  after  the  ground 
for  a  "  rational  hope." 

Anotlier  untenable  position  holds  that  religion  will  continue 
to  dominate  mankind  in  tlie  future,  in  the  same  way  in  which 
it  lias  dominated  in  the  past,  and  still  dominates,  large  por- 
tions of  the  race.  By  religion  in  tliis  connection  is  meant, 
either  a  mass  of  terrifying  or  comforting  superetitions,  or  a 
formalism  enforced  by  custom  and  law,  or  an  ecclesiastical  or 
hierarchical  institution,  or  a  system  of  dogmas  rigidly  required 
and  enforced  as  articles  of  a  standinof  or  fallincr  faith.  All 
these  hopes,  however, — if  we  may  use  the  word  *'  hope  "  with- 
out irony  in  this  connection — imply  sucli  a  reversal  of  progress 
in  all  the  forms  of  race-culture,  such  a  turning-back  to  concep- 
tions and  institutions  which  humanity  seems  in  the  process  of 
transcending,  as  would  seem  to  render  tliem  quite  unacceptable 
to  tliose  whose  expectations  of  the  future  depend  upon  ac- 
quaintance with  tlie  facts  of  liistory  and  of  psychology.  If 
one  of  these  forms  of  pessimism  as  to  tlie  future  of  religion  is 
rational  without  being  hopeful ;  the  other  is  hopeful  without 
being  rational.  We  reject  both  because  we  are  seeking  the 
grounds  in  the  nature  and  history  of  man's  religious  experience 
for  a  rational  hope. 

Of  all  other  religions  Christianity  has  the  least  semblance  of 
right  to  expect  to  dominate  mankind  in  the  future  by  any 
forceful  means,  or  by  the  method  of  brilxis  with  promises  of 
material  good,  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  by  threats 
of  exclusion  from  any  measure  or  manner  of  that  which  is 
really  good.  The  hope  for  the  future  of  the  religion  of  Christ 
certiiinly  does  not  lie  in  a  direction  to  be  reacheil  by  repeating, 
under  changed  and  more  hostile  and  essentially  impracticable 
conditions,  the  errors  and  misUikes  uf  the  Christian  Church  in 
the  past. 

There  is  little  doubt  of  the  prevalence  at  present  of  the 
•ociological  doctrine  that,  in  the  future  development  of  human 


456  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

society,  other  factors  and  interests  of  race-culture  are  destined 
largely  or  wholly  to  displace  religion.  This  doctrine  is  already 
realizing  itself  in  the  practical  attitude  toward  all  positive 
religious  beliefs  and  ceremonials,  of  the  great  body  of  the  so- 
called  *'  working-classes  "  and  also  of  the  men  of  science  and 
of  culture.  An  increasing  number  are  ready  to  say :  "  He 
who  already  possesses  science  and  art,  has  also  religion.  He 
who  does  not  possess  these  two,  let  him  have  religion."  ^  If 
in  the  light  of  such  an  attitude  toward  the  values  of  Reality 
and  the  interests  and  ideals  of  Human  Life  we  examine  the 
history  of  Occidental  and  European  civilization  during  the  last 
one  thousand  years,  we  may  make  a  rough  but  suggestive  divi- 
sion of  the  entire  time  into  three  periods.  Before  the  so-called 
Renaissance,  or  during  the  early  jNIediseval  time,  the  dominat- 
ing view,  which  seemed  to  find  expression  in  the  very  structure 
of  human  society,  attributed  to  religion  without  social  thrift,  or 
political  freedom,  or  intellectual  culture,  the  power  of  being 
the  supreme,  if  not  the  quite  sufficient,  good  for  mankind. 
But  this  very  good  of  religion  itself  was  not  of  a  character  to 
stimulate  the  increase  of  these  other  forms  of  good ;  nor  was 
it  in  itself  considered  adapted  to  satisfy  the  more  profound  in- 
tellectual, ethical,  and  social  demands  and  ideals  which  prop- 
erly belong  to  the  religious  development  of  the  race.  It  is 
certain,  however,  that  during  all  this  period  many  aspiring 
souls  found  their  higher  and  purer  satisfactions  in  religion  ; 
and  that  multitudes  of  lives  were  made  happier  and  purer  by 
religious  beliefs  and  sentiments,  however  mingled  these  may 
have  been  with  both  intellectual  and  emotional  factors  of  a 
quite  inferior  and  even  depressing  kind. 

According  to  the  ideas  and  practices  which  were  character- 
istic of  the  Renaissance,  religion  and  culture  are  closely  akin, 
if  indeed  they  are  not  intended  and  destined  to  be  wholly  iden- 
tified. During  the  period  of  gestation  preparatory  to  this  re- 
birth of  that  estimate  of  the  value  of  culture  which  had  charac- 
1  See  Eucken,  Der  Wahrheitsgehalt  der  Religion,  p.  21. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  RELIGION  457 

terized  an  earlier  age, — especially  wherever  the  influences  of 
the  Greek  spirit  and  of  its  achievements  had  made  their 
way, — the  evolution  of  the  other  greater  factors  of  race-culture 
had  gone  on,  while  that  of  religion  had  either  been  relatively 
stationary  or  had  fallen  behind.  It  was  inevitable  then,  that 
the  very  awakening  to  higher  ideals  of  social  thrift,  political 
freedom,  and  intellectual  advancement  should  result  in  a  con- 
flict with  the  reigning  beliefs,  practices,  and  ideals  of  religion. 
If  religion — the  age  rightly  argued — and  culture  are  akin  ;  it 
cannot  be  Buch  religion  as  has  prevailed  in  the  past  and  such 
culture  as  the  new  era  is  bringing  in.  It  was  largely  the 
arousing  of  that  moral  consciousness  which  always,  and  by  as- 
sumed divine  right,  holds  court  over  all  the  other  forms  of 
race-culture,  that  excited  and  gave  its  greatest  intensity  to 
tills  conflict.  Thus  conscience — at  first  of  the  select  few  and 
then  of  the  multitudes  of  the  nations — became  arrayed  against 
a  morally  ineffective  religion,  as  well  as  against  selfish  and  sen- 
suous art  and  social  unrighteousness.  A  time  of  upheaval,  of 
tlie  breaking-up  of  the  old  and  tlie  collision  of  its  fragment^j 
as  the  attempts  at  reconstruction  became  more  energetic,  was 
tlie  inevitable  result. 

Religion,  as  represented  and  guarded  by  those  forms  of  so- 
cial organization  and  ecclesiastical  discipline  which,  when  taken 
in  their  entirety  and  considered  as  essentially  one,  may  be 
called  tlie  Christian  Church  of  the  Occident,  is  necessarily  con- 
servative of  the  historical  standards  of  belief  and  the  traditional 
views  and  ideals  as  to  the  value  of  life.  It  has  undoubtedly 
l^een,  therefore,  on  the  whole  opposed  to  the  greater  part  of  the 
modctrn  advances  in  the  other  factoi-s  and  interests  of  nice- 
culture.  This  fact  may  as  well  frankly  be  confessed.  Whether 
such  opposition  Ixi  regarded  as  a  mistake  and  a  fault,  or  ai>  an 
excellence  in  the  fulfillment  of  a  divinely  appointed  mission, 
the  truth  of  fact  remains  unchanged.  It  is  not  the  Chnreh  of 
Rome  alone,  but  the  Christian  Churcli  of  every  name  and  in 
spite  of  every  form  uf  protest  arising  within  itself,  which  is  by 


458  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

its  very  constitution,  and  by  virtue  of  the  conception  of  its 
mission,  compelled  to  regard  itself  as  "the  official  and  divinely 
appointed  guardian  of  the  depositum  jideV  This  function  of 
the  religious  social  organization  is  thus  stated  in  graphic,  if 
somewhat  extreme  form,  by  a  recent  writer  :  ^  "  She  (i.  e.  the 
Church)  plays,  so  far  as  scientific  proof  is  concerned,  the  part 
taken  by  the  '  Devil's  advocate,'  in  the  process  of  canonization. 
She  is  jealous  of  disturbing  changes  in  the  human  tnedium  by 
which  faith  in  the  unseen  is  habitually  preserved  hie  et  nunc ; 
science  is  placed  by  her  on  the  defensive ;  excesses  and  fanci- 
ful theories  are  gradually  driven  out  of  court ;  a  truer  and 
more  exact  assimilation  of  assured  results  in  science  and  the- 
ology is  thus  obtained  by  the  thinkers ;  then,  and  not  until 
then.  Authority  accepts  such  results  passively.  She  is  the 
guardian,  not  of  the  truths  of  science,  but  of  the  things  of  the 
spirit.  It  is  not  for  her  to  initiate  inquiries  beyond  her  special 
province." 

But  while  the  modern  tendency  to  separate  between  religion 
and  the  culture  of  the  positive  sciences  may  be  excused  or  jus- 
tified by  advocating  the  rights  and  duties  of  the  Christian 
Church  as  the  guardian  of  the  depositiunjidei  and  of  the  things 
of  the  spirit  hie  et  nunc^  there  are  other  causes  of  this  tend- 
ency which  cannot  be  so  favorably  regarded.  That  modern 
opinion,  as  shown  by  both  theory  and  practice,  considers  social 
thrift,  political  freedom,  and  intellectual  and  artistic  culture, 
without  religion,  to  be  the  supreme  goods  for  humanity,  is 
made  evident  in  many  ways.  Most  of  these  ways  reveal  and 
emphasize  a  relative  neglect  of  religion ;  if  by  religion  we  are 
to  understand  any  experience  or  interest  essentially  identical 
with  that  which  the  Founder  of  Christianity,  and  indeed  the 
founders,  reformers,  and  teachers  of  all  the  great  religions, 
have  had  in  their  minds  and  upon  their  hearts.  It  is  not  part 
of  the  task  set  to  a  student  of  the  philosophy  of  religion  to 
discover  and  discuss  at  length  the  causes  of  this  prevailing 
1  Wilfrid  Ward,  Ideals  of  Science  and  Faith,  p.  318. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  RELIGION  459 

relative  neglect  of  religion.  But  he  cannot  overlook  the  dark 
spots  in  modern  Western  civilization,  if  he  is  intelligently  to 
make  predictions  regarding  the  future  of  Christianity. 

The  rapid  growth  of  material  prosperity,  the  increase  of  po- 
litical enfranchisement  (the  growth  of  democracy),  the  wide- 
spreading  of  a  rather  superficial  and  somewhat  spurious  cul- 
ture, have  lately  absorbed  the  interests  and  exertions  of  the 
multitude  of  mankind.  All  this  has  led  to  an  excessive  greed 
for,  and  estimate  of  wealth;  to  an  exaggerated  and  disappoint,- 
ing  appreciation  of  the  degree  of  wisdom  and  righteousness 
attainable  by  popular  self-government;  and  to  a  vain-glorious 
boasting  over  the  value  of  such  intellectual  and  aesthetic  at- 
tainments as  come  from  reading  many  books,  and  from  learning 
scattered  facts  of  so-called  science  or  smatterings  of  many  lan- 
guages. On  the  contrary,  that  training  of  mind  and  heart  by 
reflection  upon  God  and  his  relations  to  the  world  and  to  the 
soul  of  man  ;  that  steadying  and  elevating  of  the  standards  of 
commercial  and  political  righteousness  in  obedience  to  a  perfect 
Ethical  Spirit;  that  appreciation  of  the  refined  beauties  of  the 
liigher  order,  as  they  are  manifested  by  the  Divine  in  nature, 
art,  and  heroic  character, — all  these  things,  which  religion  es- 
pecially undertakes  to  achieve,  have  been  correspondingly  neg- 
lected and  esteemed  of  relatively  small  account.  Meantime, 
under  these  same  influences  tlie  organized  bodies  of  religious 
Ixilievers,  and  their  ofhcers,  the  clergy  and  the  priests,  have 
been  less  efficient  then  formerly  in  the  use  of  both  the  direct 
and  the  indirect  means  for  promoting  the  interests  of  practical 
piety.  Wliat  wonder,  then,  that  so  many — thouglitful  and 
thoughtless  alike — have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  positive 
H'ligion  will  in  tiio  future  have  little  or  no  place  in  the 
progressive  devoloi)nient  of  the  race !  Growth  in  material 
prosperity,  in  political  freedom,  in  social  organizati(m,  anil  in 
intellectual  and  artistic  culture,  without  religion,  will  quite 
sufliciently  serve  to  represent  the  increased  good  realized  by 
the  lal)oi's  and  achievements  of  mankind. 


460  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

In  opposition  to  all  this,  we  believe  that  religion  will  always 
remain  an  important  and  indispensable  factor  and  interest  in 
the  total  development  of  humanity.  To  do  this,  however,  it 
must  itself  rise  in  purity  and  grow  in  effectiveness  ;  only  in 
this  way  can  it  gain  in  the  future  an  even  more  influential  and 
beneficent  place  in  the  progressive  realization  of  the  supreme 
good  for  humanity.  In  support  of  this  expectation,  and  in 
defence  of  the  rationality  of  this  hope,  we  offer  all  that  has 
been  said  in  the  previous  chapters  of  this  book.  The  grounds 
for  the  hope  may  be  summarized,  however,  under  the  three  fol- 
lowing heads.  And,  first :  From  religion's  point  of  view  all 
that  the  positive  sciences  have  to  say  about  the  natural  evolu- 
tion of  humanity  is  necessarily  considered  as  a  divinely  ordered 
and  divinely  induced  process — a  progressive  manifestation  of 
God  the  Personal  Absolute,  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  in  man. 
The  rise  and  fall  of  religious  sects  and  organizations,  the  suc- 
cessive periods  of  depression  or  exaltation  of  the  more  obvious 
religious  interests,  the  devotion  to  religion  or  the  neglect  of  it 
on  the  part  of  generations  of  men,  may  influence  the  speed  or 
change  the  form  and  direction  of  this  process.  But  its  essen- 
tial nature  remains  unchanged ;  and  the  same  far-off  divine 
event  remains  aloft  to  the  uplifted  eye  of  faith.  This  faith 
itself,  with  its  undying  confidence  in  its  own  glorious  Ideal, 
remains  its  own  chief  evidence,  and  most  convincing  proof. 
And  the  reflective  thinking  which  traces  its  evolution  in 
the  race,  and  the  evolution  of  the  race  as  dependent  upon 
the  purity  and  power  of  this  faith,  gains  an  ever  increasing 
rational  confidence,  not  only  in  its  practical  value  but  also  in 
its  ontological  validity.  This  is  only  to  say  that  the  religious 
view  of  the  meaning  and  destiny  of  those  cosmic  existences, 
forces,  and  processes,  which  constitute  the  environment  of 
man,  and  the  religious  doctrine  of  the  nature,  significance,  and 
final  purpose  of  man's  historical  evolution  within  this  environ- 
ment, are  as  likely  to  vindicate  their  essential  truthfulness  in 
the   future,  as    is   any   other  view,    from    whatsoever  stand- 


THE  FUTURE  OF  RELIGION  461 

point  of   science,  history,  or  philosophy,  such  view  may  be 
taken. 

More  specifically,  in  the  second  place,  the  psychological 
truths  as  to  the  nature  and  origin  of  religion  tend  to  confirm 
the  same  conclusion  as  to  the  future  of  religion  in  the  devel- 
opment of  the  race.  They  show  that  man's  religious  nature  is 
no  fragmentary  and  evanescent  affair.  Religion  is  neither  a 
freak,  nor  a  disease,  nor  a  whim,  of  human  nature.  Religion 
is  essentially  natural  with  man,  in  the  profoundest  and  most 
comprehensive  meaning  of  the  words.  There  is  no  contradic- 
tion inherent  in  the  saying  that  belief  in  the  Supernatural,  and 
the  outgoing  of  heart  and  will,  and  the  shaping  of  conduct  in 
view  of  such  belief,  are  essentially  natural.  If  ever — as  fre- 
quently happens — a  quarrel  arises  between  nature  and  the  su- 
pernatural, still  it  is  in  man's  total  experience  that  both  the 
sources  and  the  solution  of  this  quarrel  must  subsist.  As  long 
as  man  remains  man,  he  will  have  religion — will,  so  to  say,  make 
religion  for  himself.  And  as  long  as  humanity  continues  to 
advance  in  the  varied  important  ways  of  its  evolution  in  liis- 
tory,  humanity  will  develop  also  its  religious  beliefs,  senti- 
ments, and  the  practical  piety  which  expresses  in  conduct  tlie 
sincerity  of  these  beliefs  and  sentiments.  He  must  indeed  be 
a  shallow  or  a  credulous  student  of  religion  from  the  psycho- 
logical point  of  view  who  can  persuade  himself  that  the  coming 
years  are  going  so  to  disentangle  and  detach  the  interwoven 
threads  of  man's  mental  and  social  reactions  as  to  let  escape 
the  relv/ious  nature  and  still  leave  human  nature  essentially  the 
same.  For,  what  lias  our  study  of  these  varied  reactions  shown 
to  1x3  true?  They  are  so  involved  with  one  another,  and  with 
the  entire  mental,  moral,  and  social  life  of  humanity,  that  they 
are  not  parts  of  the  structure  which  can  be  separated  from  the 
structure  itself ;  ihuy  are,  tlio  rather,  material  of  the  structure, 
built  into  it  from  footing-stone  to  cornice,  and  from  wall  to 
wall.  Religious  experiences  are  not  fringes  of  the  complex 
web  ;  they  are  portions  of  it^  very  warp  and  woof. 


462  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

If  now  we  turn  from  the  psychological  to  the  historical  study 
of  religion,  the  same  truth  appears,  displayed  and  emphasized 
in  another  form.  For  history,  too,  displays  and  emphasizes 
the  universality  of  religion.  This  service  to  a  rational  hope 
for  the  future  of  religion  it  renders  in  three  important  ways. 
It  establishes  the  fact  that,  as  far  back  and  as  far  afield  as 
man's  historical  evolution  can  be  traced,  some  form  of  religious 
belief  and  practice  has  characterized  the  process,  and  has 
formed  a  more  or  less  important  means  of  differentiating 
him  from  the  lower  animals.  It  also  shows  the  difficulty, 
amounting  to  a  practical  impossibility,  of  any  considerable 
community,  not  to  say  any  people  or  nation,  dispensing  alto- 
gether with  religion  and  yet  retaining  the  other  factors  and 
interests  of  the  community  and  national  life.  After  each 
attempt  at  banishing  the  old  beliefs,  there  has  been  hung  out 
some  such  placard  as  this  :  "  Wanted  a  new  Religion  ! "  And, 
finally,  the  less  obvious  but  no  less  real  failure  of  all  efforts  to 
reform  and  elevate  the  multitudes  by  any  degree  of  progress 
in  social  thrift,  political  freedom,  and  intellectual  and  sestheti- 
cal  culture,  with  religion  left  out  of  the  account,  is  as  signifi- 
cant as  the  corresponding  failure  to  effect  the  same  thing  by 
means  of  a  religion  which  maintains  a  standing  opposition  to 
these  other  forms  of  culture. 

In  a  word,  some  form  of  beliefs,  sentiments,  and  practical 
maxims,  which  will  afford  satisfactions  and  motives  to  aspira- 
tion and  to  endeavor  after  certain  ideal  values,  such  as  religion 
recognizes,  is  an  essential  and  permanent  interest  in  the  life  of 
the  individual  and  of  the  race.  The  admission  of  this  truth  is 
customarily  made,  at  the  last,  even  by  those  who  most  violently 
oppose  all  forms  of  positive  religion,  and  who  most  confidently 
predict  its  somewhat  speedy  decline  and  extinction  as  of  im- 
portant moment  in  the  development  of  humanity.  A  notable 
instance  of  this  is  the  work  of  M.  Guyau  on  "  The  Irreligion 
of  the    Future."^     According   to   this    author,   all   the   most 

1  L'lrr^ligion  de  L'Avenir,  ]fitude  Sociologique,  7th  ed.,  Paris,  1900. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  RELIGION  463 

cherished  dogmas  of  religion  are  untenably  and  irrationally 
anthropomorphic,  and  so  doomed  by  the  advances  of  scientific 
knowledge.  Religious  morality,  which  is  based  upon  fear  and 
an  unwarrantable  feeling  of  mysticism,  with  its  cult  of  prayers, 
will  suffer  dissolution.  Nor  will  the  popular  morality  be  in- 
jured thereby.  F^or  religion  is  not  a  condition  sine  qua  non  of 
superioiity  in  the  struggle  for  existence  ;  and  science,  free 
thought,  and  art,  will  be  able  to  find  their  own  rules  for  the 
control  of  themselves  and  of  human  conduct.  Nor  is  the 
definitively  religious  sentiment  innate  and  imperishable,  as 
some  of  those  (e.g.  Renan,  Taine,  and  others)  who  held  the 
dogmas  of  religion  to  be  absurd,  have  taught.  Children  can 
be  educated,  the  purity  and  devotion  of  woman  secured,  and 
the  fecundity  of  the  race  sufficiently  assured,  without  influence 
from  the  faith  of  any  form  of  positive  religion. 

But  what  will  subsist,  after  all  positive  religion  has  disap- 
peared from  that  structure  of  human  beliefs,  sentiments,  and 
practices,  which  so  many  thousands  of  years  of  human  expe- 
rience and  of  human  historical  evolution  has  built  up  ?  To 
this  important  question,  M.  Guyau,  in  the  I'ole  of  prophet,  con- 
fidently gives  the  following  categorical  reply  :^  "  That  which 
will  subsist  of  the  diverse  religions  in  the  irreligion  of  the  fu- 
ture, is  this  idea  that  the  supreme  ideal  of  humanity,  and  even 
of  nature,  consists  in  tlie  establishment  of  ever  stricter  social 
relations  among  the  different  beings  "  that  constitute  this  com- 
plex totality.  It  is,  indeed,  by  force  of  their  secret  or  open  as- 
sociations that  the  greater  religions  have  conquered  the  world. 
But  what  force  accounts  for,  and  imparts  its  force  to  these  as- 
sociations, M.  Guyau  seems  largely  unable  to  comprehend,  or 
even  to  admit  to  his  thoughtful  consideration,  except  in  a  very 
partial  and  rather  patronizing  way.  And  when  becomes  finally 
to  the  discussion  of  that  theory  of  reality,  or  metaphysics,  in 
wliich  the  faitlis,  sentiments,  and  practices  of  religion  cohere, 
he  has  his  own  conception  to  propose  as  one  better  able  than 

»  Ibid.,  p.  339/. 


464  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

any  religious  faith  to  fill  the  vast  vacuum  which  his  negative 
criticism  has  created.  It  is  a  "naturalistic  monism"  which  is 
to  replace  the  dogmas  of  every  form  of  positive  religion.  For 
this  metaphysical  hypothesis,  with  its  deification  of  Nature 
(spelled  large  and  with  a  capital)  really  embraces  and  expresses 
in  better  form  the  ontological  values  and  virtues  of  theism,  pan- 
theism, and  atheism.  And  yet  this  *'  irreligion  of  the  future  " 
can  scarcely  be  called  a  rational  hope  for  humanity.  "  To  re- 
sume," says  M.  Guyau,^  *'  in  this  age  of  crisis,  of  religious, 
moral,  and  social  ruin,  of  reflective  and  destructive  analysis,  the 
reasons  for  suffering  abound,  and  they  end  by  seeming  to  be 
motives  for  despair.  Each  new  progress  of  intelligence  or 
sensibility,  as  we  have  seen,  would  appear  to  be  productive  of 
new  pains."  But  what  for  the  individual  ?  To  borrow  the 
author's  own  figure  of  speech ;  ^ — ''  In  all  that  remains  of  sen- 
sation or  thought  for  us,  one  sentiment  only  is  dominant,  that 
of  being  weary,  very  weary."  And  so  the  wise  man,  like  some 
traveller  through  an  endless  desert,  when  afilicted  with  that 
fever  of  torrid  climes  which  exhausts  before  it  kills,  will  be 
glad  to  lie  down  upon  the  sand,  and  "  amicably  contemplate, 
without  a  tear,  without  a  desire,  with  the  fixed  look  of  fever, 
the  undulating  caravan  of  his  brethren  which  is  losing  itself 
in  the  limitless  horizon,  toward  the  unknown  which  he  will 
never  see." 

This  view  of  the  future  of  religion,  developed  with  so  much 
of  learning,  dialectical  and  critical  skill,  fine  feeling,  and  pol- 
ished rhetoric,  has  not  been  brought  forward  either  for  criticism 
or  for  refutation.  It,  the  rather,  evinces  the  indestructible  na- 
ture of  man's  religious  life  itself ;  it  really  reveals  more  clearly 
the  grounds  on  which  reposes  the  rational  hope  of  its  continu- 
ance and  continued  development  in  the  future.  For  even  M. 
Guyau  must  have  a  theory  of  the  Universe  which  will  satisfy 
his  ideals.  He,  too,  is  compelled  to  estimate  at  something  ap- 
proaching their  real  value  the  satisfactions  of  an  emotional 
^Ibid.,    p.     408.  ^Ibid.,   p.    478. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  RELIGION  465 

and  sentimental  character  which  must  be  provided  by  this  the- 
ory. Therefore  he  virtually  adopts  the  beliefs  and  senti- 
ments thus  awakened,  as  though  of  the  highest  importance 
in  the  effort  at  securing  the  social  evolution  and  social  better- 
ment of  mankind.  He  would  have  tlie  individual,  in  tlie  con- 
fidence of  these  beliefs  and  in  the  experience  of  these  emotions, 
suffer  and  hope  and  labor  to  the  end  for  the  social  good  of  his 
brethren  among  men.  He  even  regards  the  higher  interests  of 
science,  free  thought,  and  art,  as  somehow  inseparably  con- 
nected with  the  attitude  of  the  individual  and  of  society  toward 
the  Universe  at  large.  And  when  the  end  comes  for  the  ideal- 
ist, the  believer,  the  self-denying  devotee  who  ever  hopes 
against  hope,  and  persistently  expects  the  triumph  of  liis  ideals, 
he  would  have  him  die  as  one — 

"  Who  wraps  his  cloak  about  him 
And  lies  down  to  pleasant  dreams." 

Now  there  is  nothing  new  about  all  this; — nothing,  indeed, 
that  does  not  leave  the  witness  of  psychology  and  of  history 
substantially  the  same.  It  has  the  value  of  M.  Guyau*s  solu- 
tion of  the  problems  of  religion,  as  they  are  proposed  to  reflec- 
tive thinking  in  a  form  that  is  dictiited  absolutely — we  might 
almost  say — by  the  mental  and  social  characteristics  of  the 
present  age.  In  several  important  respects,  indeed,  this  an- 
swer, which  predicts  the  "  irreligion  of  the  future,"  is  essen- 
tially the  same  as  the  answer  which  encourages  a  rational  hope 
for  the  future  of  religion.  In  a  word,  the  problem  remains  un- 
solved: \V7iat  beliefs,  sentiments,  and  practices,  concerning 
the  Ultimate  Ground  of  man's  experience,  best  accord  with 
the  totality  of  this  experience?  We  do  not  believe  that  a 
naturalistic  Monism,  after  the  type  wliich  M.  Guyau  proposes, 
affords  tlie  most  satisfactory  answer  to  this  problem.  Indeed, 
the  problem  itself  is  proposed  by  this  writer  in  a  manner 
which  leaves  large  arciis  of  this  experience  quite  out  of  the 
account. 

But  if  religion  is  surely  to  liave  a  future,  the  questions  log- 

30 


466  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ically  follow :  Will  the  future  belong  to  any  one  of  the  now 
existing  forms  of  religion  ?  and,  If  to  any  one  form  now  exist- 
ing, to  which  one?  These  inquiries  are  certain  to  provoke 
differences  and  hot  discussions  amongst  even  the  most  candid 
and  well-instructed  adherents  to  the  different  forms  of  positive 
religion.  For  the  most  dispassionate  student  of  the  phenom- 
ena of  man's  religious  life  and  religious  development  from 
the  philosophical  point  of  view,  they  do  not  admit  of  an  an- 
swer with  the  same  assurance  which  may  reasonably  be  had 
with  reference  to  the  future  of  religion  in  general. 

The  philosophy  of  religion  has  no  data  for  a  detailed  de- 
scription of  the  particular  religion  which  will  surely  solve  the 
problem  of  the  future.  Nor  if  an  appeal  be  made  to  the  as- 
surance with  which  the  content  of  any  existing  form  of  reli- 
gious faith  is  at  present  received,  does  this  appeal  serve  the 
purpose  of  furnishing  the  desired  evidence.  In  the  case  of 
Christianity,  for  example,  no  particular  scheme  of  dogmas,  or 
plan  of  ecclesiastical  organization,  or  show  of  ritual  and  cere- 
monial, or  set  of  practical  maxims  for  the  governance  of  life, 
could  command  the  assent  of  all  the  so-called  authorities.  In 
the  cases  of  Hinduism,  Buddhism,  and  Islam,  the  confusion  of 
opinion  on  all  these  topics  would  be  no  less  great.  Even  if 
the  inquiry  be  made  after  the  barest  so-called  "  essentials  "  of 
any  one  of  the  greater  world-religions,  a  harmonious  answer  is  by 
no  means  easy  to  obtain.  Reference  to  the  original  constitu- 
tion of  these  religions  does  not  avail  either  to  define  the  limits 
within  which  their  present  developments  must  be  accepted  as 
legitimate  and  true  to  the  norm  ;  neither  does  such  reference 
afford  a  sure  guaranty  for  the  constitution  which  they  will  as- 
sume in  the  developments  of  the  future.  Could  the  Founders 
of  any  of  them — especially,  e.  ^.,  Jesus  and  the  Apostles — pro- 
nounce judgment  upon  all  that  which  is  to-day  covered  by 
their  names  ;  who  can  doubt  that  the  character  of  the  judg- 
ment would  greatly  surprise  the  multitude  of  their  followers? 
What  would  Christ  say  about  the  beliefs,  institutions,  profes- 


THE  FUTURE  OF  RELIGION  467 

sions,  and  practices,  which  bear  the  name  of  Christianity  at  the 
present  day  ? 

Uncertainty  over  the  more  precise  form  of  its  future  histori- 
cal evolution  is  not,  however,  a  matter  peculiar  to  the  content 
of  religious  beliefs  or  to  the  religious  life.  Such  uncertainty 
belongs,  of  their  very  nature,  to  all  the  more  complex  historical 
developments.  The  world  is  indeed  old  ;  the  world  is  ever 
building  itself  anew.  There  is  a  certain  permanency  of  norm, 
a  semblance  of  an  enduring  and  all-comprehending  plan ;  but 
change  is  everywhere  the  very  life  and  reality  of  things,  of  in- 
stitutions, of  beliefs,  and  of  ideals.  Since  man  is  man,  how- 
ever, and  since  a  certain  constitution  of  human  nature  with 
relatively,  if  not  absolutely  permanent  characteristics,  subsists 
throughout  the  historical  evolution  of  the  race,  predictions  as 
to  the  future  of  religion  may  make  a  rightful  claim  to  our  con- 
fidence. At  their  very  least,  they  are  entitled  to  be  received 
as  a  rational  hope. 

But  what — more  specifically  said — may  we  reasonably  hope 
fur  with  reference  to  the  future  of  religion?  Three  things 
may  be  said  with  most  well-founded  and  comfortable  assurance 
in  answer  to  this  question.  And,  first,  the  religion  of  the  future 
will  be  social,  in  the  liigher  and  better  meaning  of  this  word. 
It  will  more  and  more  be  a  power  to  transform  society — the 
*'  Great  Psychic  Uplift "  of  the  race.  No  form  of  positive 
religion  which  does  not  actually  effectuate  in  a  large  and  gen- 
erous way  the  social  improvement  of  mankind  can  reasonably 
hope  to  have  its  future  prolonged.  Second  :  The  religion  of 
tlie  future  will  be  ethical — in  the  higher  and  better  meaning  of 
this  word.  It  will  ])e  more  and  more  an  inspiring  and  illumin- 
ing motive  for  the  control  of  the  conduct  of  the  individual  in 
the  interests  of  righteousness,  truencss,  and  all  the  virtues  of 
mind,  will,  and  heart.  No  form  of  religion  which  does  not  in 
fact  make  men  better  morally  can  rciusonably  hope  to  have  its 
future  prolonged.  Hut,  third,  the  religion  of  the  future  will 
be  a/dith, — in  the  sense  that  it  will  reUiin  a  certain  character- 


468  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

istic  view  of  the  world,  of  human  life  and  human  destiny,  and 
of  what  has  worth  of  the  highest  and  most  imperishable  kind. 
This  faith  within  the  soul  of  man,  as  subjective  religion,  will 
be  the  spirit  of  practical  piety,  or  of  loving  trust  toward  the 
Divine  Being,  and  of  filial  feeling  and  conduct  toward  all  finite 
spirits  as  sons  of  the  Infinite  and  ethically  Perfect  Spirit. 
And  the  normal  relation  between  this  faith  and  the  social  and 
ethical  functions  of  religion  will  be  retained ;  since  it  belongs 
to  the  very  constitution  of  man  that  his  positive  view  of  life, 
when  warmed  with  emotion,  should  realize  itself  in  his  behav- 
ior as  a  member  of  society. 

The  earnest  and  enlightened  believer  in  any  positive  form  of 
religion  that  has  advanced  a  claim  to  absoluteness  and  to  uni- 
versality will  naturally  shape  his  hopes  in  the  future  of  reli- 
gion yet  more  definitely  than  this.  The  religion  of  the  future 
is  to  be  his  religion — perhaps  expanded  and  modified,  neces- 
sarily purified,  and  yet  essentially  the  same.  From  this  position 
of  hope  he  will  not  be  driven  easily,  even  when  he  encounters 
all  the  difficulty  of  trying  to  discover  just  what  is  "  essential  " 
about  the  religion  to  which  his  hope  for  the  future  is  so  firmly 
attached.  We,  too,  are  Christians.  As  students  of  the  history, 
psychology,  and  philosophy  of  religion  in  general,  we  think  to 
enlighten  and  confirm  the  hope  that  an  essentially  Christian 
religion  will  be  the  religion  of  the  future  of  humanity.  In 
order,  however,  to  impart  any  semblance  of  rationality  to  this 
hope,  two  things  must  be  accomplished.  We  must  introduce 
again  the  distinction  with  which  all  our  previous  investigations 
have  already  made  us  so  familiar  : — namely,  "  between  the  parts 
played  in  the  complex  result  by  the  spirit  of  Christ  on  the  one 
hand  and  by  the  doctrines  and  institutions  of  the  Church  on  the 
other ; "  and  we  must  also  try  to  determine  what  is  meant  by 
"essential  Christianity."  In  a  word:  What  is  the  essence  of 
the  religion  of  Christ? 

The  claims  of  the  religion  of  Christ  to  be  universal,  and  to 
have  an  absolute  content  of  truth,  are  themselves  a  matter  of 


THE  FUTURE  OF  RELIGION  469 

historical  development  and  therefore  of  historical  investigation. 
But  these  claims  are  also  open  to  reexamination  by  reflective 
thinking  in  the  light  of  all  the  other  truths  which  liumanity 
has  achieved ;  they  are  therefore  in  a  measure  matters  upon 
which  philosophy  is  called  to  pronounce. 

In  their  original  form  the  claims  to  universality  put  forth  in 
the  name  of  the  Christian  religion  arose  in  the  belief  that  it 
inherited  those  hopes  of  Judaism  which  were  founded  upon  a 
sure  divine  promise.  The  principal  stages  by  which  this  claim 
rose  to  such  an  heighth  were  the  following :  (1)  Yahweh,  the 
tribal  and  then  the  national  god,  is  the  only  true  God  ;  (2)  the 
heathen,  or  worshippers  of  other  gods,  are  going  to  submit  to 
Yahweh  and  in  fact  become  Jews  ;  (3)  the  Jewish  religion 
will  continue  in  spite  of  the  cessation  of  the  national  life,  will 
spread  and  become  universal  (this,  chiefly  through  the  influence 
of  the  Diaspora^  ;  (4)  Christianity,  as  the  fulfillment  of  the 
Law  and  the  Prophets,  inherits  the  claims  of  Judaism  to  uni- 
versal acceptance  and  dominion ;  and  (5),  fnially,  Christianity 
progressively  has  realized,  and  is  still  realizing,  its  universal 
character.  This  last  stage  of  the  claim  implies  that  the  Chris- 
tian faith  is  becoming,  in  fact,  adaptable  to  mankind  ;  and  that 
it  is  being  actually  adopted  by  mankind,  irrespective  of  differ- 
ences in  race,  position  in  history,  or  stages  of  race-culture.  This 
is  that  characteristic  of  *'  historicalness  "  in  the  broader  mean- 
ing of  the  word,  tlie  necessity  and  value  of  which  for  the  reli- 
gious life  and  development  of  liumanity  has  already  Ijeen  made 
clear.'  All  these  claims  however,  with  the  exception  of  the 
last,  have  of  necessity  largely  lost  their  influence  over  the 
minds  of  men.  The  closing  words  of  the  Old  Testament  upon 
tliis  subject  must  now  Ixi  undei-stood  in  a  quite  different  mean- 
ing from  that  which  they  liad  in  the  thought  of  him  who  ut- 
tered them  ;  if,  indeed,  its  prophetic  foresiglit  of  the  future  of 
religion  is  to  !«•  justified  at  all  by  the  liistory  of  tlie  race  : 
'*  From  the  rising  even   to  the  st'tting  of  the  sun  is  my  name 

»Scc  Vol.  I,  pp.  G2/7. 


470  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

great ;  and  everywhere  will  incense  be  offered  unto  my  name, 
and  a  pure  offering "  (^.  e.,  sacrifices  and  burnt-offerings.)^ 
"  Yahweh  of  hosts,"  even  among  the  remnant  of  his  "  chosen 
people,"  is  no  longer  pleased  with  the  sight  and  smell  of  burnt- 
offerings  ;  but  the  sacrifice  of  a  pure  heart  and  an  unselfish 
life  is  the  moral  and  social  ideal  of  all  believers  in  the  "  true 
God." 

The  content  of  truth  for  which  the  claim  of  absoluteness 
and  universality  is  made  under  the  name  of  Christianity  is,  as 
has  already  been  said,  not  an  altogether  easy  thing  to  deter- 
mine, either  by  the  historical  or  by  the  speculative  method  of 
inquiry.  From  the  days  of  the  earliest  Apologists  onward  it 
has  been  assumed  that  Christianity  is  both  a  revealed  and  a 
rational  religion.  As  Harnack^  has  comprehensively  stated 
the  case  :  It  comprises  "  the  rational  truths,  revealed  by  the 
prophets  in  the  Holy  Scriptures,  and  summarized  in  Christ 
(  XpLffrbs  X670S  Kai  v6/xos )  ;  which  in  their  unity  represent  the 
divine  wisdom,  and  tlie  recognition  of  which  leads  to  virtue 
and  eternal  life."  More  comprehensively  defined,  this  in- 
cludes— "  Christianity  viewed  as  monotheistic  cosmology  (God 
as  the  Father  of  the  world)  ;  Christianity  as  the  highest  moral- 
it}^  and  righteousness  (God  as  the  Judge,  who  rewards  good- 
ness and  punishes  wickedness)  ;  Christianity  regarded  as  re- 
demption (God  as  the  Good  One  who  assists  man  and  rescues 
him  from  the  power  of  the  demons.)  "  And  to  all  this  the 
truth  of  history  requires  that  we  should  add  the  claim :  The 
divine  redemption  comes  to  man  as  a  revelation  of  God's  gra- 
cious love  in  the  person  and  work  of  Jesus  Christ,  who  stands 
in  a  unique  relation  of  sonship  to  God,  and  to  man  as  their 
Savior,  example,  and  the  imparter  to  them  of  eternal  life. 

In  the  subsequent  development  of  the  religion  called  after 
the  name  of  Christ,  many  important  elements  of  doctrine,  rit- 
ual, and  practice,  have  been  added  by  all  the  various  Christian 

1  Malachi,   i,   11. 

3  History  of  Dogma,  II,  p.  203. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  RELIGION  471 

churches  and  sects  ;  and  not  a  few  of  these  additions  have  been 
proclaimed  as  belonging  to  the  "essentials  of  Christianity." 
As  a  result,  there  is  not  one  of  the  greater  divisions  of  Chris- 
tianity that  can  to-day  substantiate  the  claim  to  represent 
faitlifully  and  purely  the  "  religion  of  Christ."  Indeed,  those 
first  three  centuries  which  resulted  in  the  formation  of  the 
Church  Catholic  were  preeminently  characterized  by  the  addi- 
tion of  doctrines,  drawn  chiefly  from  the  sources  of  the  Greek 
philosophy  of  the  age.  And  never  since  has  Christian  dogma 
developed  itself  in  any  considerable  independence  of  the  influ- 
ences of  its  scientific  and  philosophical  environment.  On  the 
contrary,  its  development  has  largely  consisted  in  the  incorpo- 
ration of  elements  derived  from  this  environment ;  or  in  the  new 
interpretation  of  its  more  primitive  and  original  content  of  truth, 
so  as  to  make  it  consistent  with  the  truths  furnished  by  this  envi- 
ronment. What  is  true  of  its  dogma,  is  true  also  of  its  ecclesias- 
tical organization,  its  forms  of  worship,  and  its  system  of  maxims 
for  the  control  of  the  Christian  life  in  matters  of  conduct.  So 
often  in  the  entire  history  of  this  religion,  as  the  attempt  has  been 
made  to  check  development  by  a  return  to  the  so-called  sim- 
plicity of  the  original  Christian  faith,  practice,  or  exact  form 
of  association,  the  attempt  has  failed.  From  the  very  nature 
of  the  case  such  an  attempt  must  always  fail.  In  not  a  few 
instances  a  result  far  worse  than  mere  failure  has  been  the  ex- 
perience of  such  reactionary  movements.  In  dogma,  there  has 
come  in  this  way  a  new  form  of  bigotry  ;  in  ritual,  a  new  form 
of  extravagance  or  of  barrenness  ;  in  organization,  a  new  form 
either  of  license  or  of  repressive  control ;  and  in  life,  new  forms 
of  fanaticism  or  of  sensuous  excesses.  Reform,  renovation,  re- 
construction, /^//-filling  of  the  content  of  truth,  and  improved 
realization  of  the  spirit  of  life — these  are  as  much  "essentials'* 
of  Christianity,  if  it  is  to  make  good  its  claim  to  universality, 
as  are  tliose  j)recious  and  inunortal  truths  which  were  given  in 
concrete,  syml>jlic,  and  pei-sonal  form,  by  the  Founder  of  tliis 
religion. 


472  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

With  these  thoughts  in  mind  the  rationality  of  the  hope  for 
the  future  of  the  religion  of  Christ  may  be  confirmed  by  com- 
paring it,  as  respects  its  nature  and  present  condition  with  the 
other  greater  religions.  Like  every  other  religion  which  makes 
similar  claims  to  a  certain  absoluteness  and  universality, 
Christianity  is  now,  and  for  an  indefinite  time  will  continue  to 
be,  face  to  face  with  friendly  or  hostile  rivals.  In  not  a  few 
places  it  is  to-day  distinctly  inferior  to  some  of  these  rivals 
in  aggressive  force  and  adaptation  to  its  environment.  For 
example, — as  all  our  previous  psychological  and  historical 
induction,  as  well  as  the  speculative  conclusions  which  we 
have  endeavored  to  found  upon  it,  would  lead  us  to  reaffirm, — 
Coptic  Christianity  can  never  displace  the  surrounding  Muham- 
madism ;  and  the  same  thing  is  probably  true  of  Armenian 
Christianity.  Nor  do  we  believe  that  the  Greek  Church  can 
successfully  compete  with  reformed  Buddhism  in  Japan,  or 
with  Confucianism  in  China.  All  the  nature-religions  may, 
indeed,  at  once  be  set  aside.  They  can  make  no  claim  to  the 
promise  of  the  future.  That  they  are  to  be  displaced  by  higher 
and  purer  forms  of  faith  is  as  certain  as  that  the  lower  stages 
of  race-culture  with  which  they  are  allied  will  give  way  to  the 
higher,  in  the  historical  evolution  of  the  race.  When  the  de- 
cadent ceremonial,  the  intolerable  bondage  of  caste,  and  the 
superstitious  and  largely  immoral  nature-worship  of  Hinduism 
are  set  aside,  there  remains  of  it  only  its  religious  philosophy. 
In  some  of  its  best  and  most  distinguishing  features  this  phi- 
losophy is  already  almost,  or  quite  essentially  in  accord  with  that 
of  modern  Christian  Theism.  So  far  forth,  the  expectation  is 
reasonable  that  both  will  abide.  But  philosophy,  no  matter 
how  interesting,  impressive,  devout,  and  true  to  Reality,  cannot 
of  itself,  constitute  a  univ^ersal  religion. 

They  err  greatly,  whatever  reasons  may  seem  to  encourage 
the  confidence  in  the  decay  of  the  Turkish  government,  who 
regard  the  faith  of  Islam  as  destined  speedily  to  pass  away. 
On  the  contrary,  this  religion  has  a  strong  and  unbroken  hold 


THE  FUTURE  OF  RELIGION  473 

on  some  of  the  most  vigorous  races ;  and  where  it  gains  and 
has  kept  such  a  hold,  it  is  of  all  rival  religions  the  most  diffi- 
cult to  displace  by  Christianity.  Its  sturdy,  combative,  and 
unquestioning  monotheism,  and  the  strength  of  the  appeal 
which  it  makes  to  those  who  wish  to  "  square "  themselves 
with  the  interests  of  both  worlds,  promises  to  endure 
through  an  indefinite  time  in  the  future.  And  here  is  where 
the  current  Christianity  is  especially  weak.  It  wants  both 
worlds ;  and  it  has,  therefore,  either  deliberately  or  unthink- 
ingly placed  itself  in  an  alliance — too  often  obviously  and 
discreditiibly  contrary  to  the  "  religion  of  Christ  " — with  the 
regnant  material  interests,  however  oppressive  and  unrighteous 
those  interests  may,  for  the  present,  seem  to  be.  But  to  serve 
God  and  mammon  is  less  easy  and  less  really  profitable  for  a 
follower  of  Jesus  than  for  a  follower  of  Muhammad.  The 
weakness  of  Islam,  however,  when  considered  from  the  defini- 
tively religious  Y>^\\\t  of  view,  is  its  inability  to  satisfy  the 
needs  of  a  soul  that  longs  to  be  assured  of  tlie  redeeming  love 
of  God ;  nor  does  Islam  furnish  to  the  individual  and  to  society 
those  purifying  and  elevating  spiritual  influences,  and  that 
power  of  a  new  life  of  inner  righteousness  in  union  of  spirit 
with  God,  which  is,  after  all,  the  deepest  and  most  honorable 
craving  of  the  age. 

While  Islam  has  been  distinguished  for  its  exclusiveness,  tlie 
easy,  rapid,  and  widely  spreading  syncretism  of  Buddhism  lias 
always  been  one  of  its  most  distinguishing  features.  The  best 
spirit  of  the  religion  of  Buddha  is  in  accord  with  the  spirit  of 
the  religion  of  Christ,  in  its  presentation  to  human  need 
and  human  hope  of  the  great  and  comforting  truth  of  the  di- 
vine pit}',  a.s  evinced  in  a  manner  irrespective  of  considerations 
of  caste,  rank,  political  distinctions,  or  social  stiUiding.  In 
this  most  importint  respect  Buddhism  is,  like  Christianity,  a 
distiiu^tly  univei'sal  rt'ligion.  lUit  even  its  most  anient  and 
devoted  advocates  cannot  face  the  facts  without  being  com- 
pelled to  admit  that  its  cult  and  traditional  doguiiW  are  still  in 


474  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  Mediaeval  period ;  that  there  is  a  lamentable  lack  (not  to 
fail  gratefully  to  acknowledge  individual  exceptions)  of  intel- 
lectual culture  and  moral  principle  among  its  priesthood ;  and 
that,  in  spite  of  current,  and  in  certain  spots  more  or  less  suc- 
cessful efforts  at  increased  enlightenment  and  ethical  improve- 
ment, its  present  beliefs,  sentiments,  and  practices  are  not 
adapted  to  become  universal. 

Our  conclusion,  then,  as  to  the  reasonableness  of  the  claim 
of  Christianity  to  be  the  religion  of  the  future  is  a  two-fold 
conclusion.  Its  claim  to  universality,  to  be  the  absolutely  true 
and  permanently  satisfying  religion  for  all  mankind,  is  a  claim 
which  every  generation,  and  every  individual,  may  rightly  ex- 
amine anew — may  properly  challenge  and  put  to  the  test.  No 
age,  no  school  of  theologians,  no  ecclesiastical  organization 
with  its  collection  of  dogmas  or  rule  of  faith,  can  answer  infal- 
libly and  for  all  time  these  inquiries :  "  What  is  essential 
Christianity  ?  "  and,  "  Is  it  the  final  and  absolutely  true  reli- 
gion, destined  to  be  accepted  by  all  mankind  ?  "  The  experience 
of  the  individual  believer,  both  as  a  form  of  belief  and  as  an 
informing  spirit  of  life,  may  be  compared,  indeed,  with  the 
norm  of  experience  furnished  in  the  records  of  his  religion. 
The  comparison  may  warrant  him  in  affirming  the  truth  of  the 
declaration :  "  Jesus  Christ,  the  same  yesterday,  and  to-day, 
and  forever."  (Heb.  xiii,  8.)  But  in  order  to  convert  this 
personal  conviction  into  a  scientifically  established  prediction, 
or  into  a  confident  hope  for  all  of  the  race,  much  more  must  be 
established  than  can  be  furnished  by  any  individual's  experi- 
ence. The  question  is  ever  recurring  anew :  What  is  meant 
by  the  *'  Jesus  Christ,"  whose  name  embodies  this  content  of 
unchanging  experience,  and  of  permanent  and  absolute  truth  ? 
And  again :  In  what  sense  can  that  be  called  "  the  same," 
which  was  in  Jesus'  own  case,  the  unfolding  of  a  life  according 
to  some  hidden  norm,  or  ideal  ?  How  can  that  remain  "  the 
same  "  which  has  confessedly  ever  since  consisted  in  a  history 
of  changes,  a  progressive  realization  of  an  ideal  ?     Hence  the 


THE  FUTURE  OF  RELIGION  475 

perpetual  demand  for  inquiries  as  to  what  this  Ideal  is ;  and  as 
to  its  correspondence  to  some  Ultimate  Reality. 

AVhatever  criticism  may  decide,  therefore,  concerning  the 
alleged  infallibility  and  authority  of  the  sacred  writings  of 
Christianity,  or  concerning  the  truthfulness  and  practical  value 
of  any  of  the  factors  which  have  been  added  to  its  content 
since  the  canon  of  the  New  Testament  was  closed,  the  concep- 
tion of  development  cannot  be  denied  in  its  application  to  this, 
as  to  all  other  claimants  to  be  the  religion  of  the  future.  On 
the  contrary,  the  ideal  of  a  religion  that  is  absolutely  fixed  in 
an  unchanging  but  infallibly  true  creed,  with  an  unalterable 
form  of  cult,  and  a  universally  binding  set  of  practical  maxims, 
does  not  apply  to  Christianity,  in  fact.  From  the  very  nature 
of  man,  of  religion,  and  of  human  history^  such  an  ideal  could 
not  be  realized  in  any  form  of  religion.  Could  any  religion 
take  on  such  a  form,  it  would  on  this  very  account  be  the  fur- 
thest possible  from  the  ideal. 

It  is  just  this  capacity  for  variation,  united  with  the  persist- 
ence of  its  one  high  practical  aim,  and  of  its  point  of  view 
from  which  to  regard  all  that  is,  and  happens,  as  manifesta- 
tion of  the  good-will  and  redeeming  love  of  the  Absolute  and 
perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  which  makes  Christianity  adapted  to 
become  in  the  future  the  religion  of  mankind.  This  claim  to 
universality  involves  the  persuasion  that  Christianity  will  be 
able  to  throw  off  all  that  the  growing  knowledge  of  man  shows 
to  be  untrue  ;  all  that  man's  increasing  refinement  of  sestheti- 
cal  feeling  shows  to  1x3  inconsistent  with  the  sublime  beauty  of 
the  Divine  Nature  ;  and  all  that  the  rising  and  purified  moral 
consciousness  of  the  race  pronounces  morally  unworthy  of 
Ciod's  perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  There  can  be  no  more  suitiible 
and  convincing  proof  of  the  claim  to  an  absolute  value  than 
the  power  of  the  life  and  truth  belonging  to  any  religion,  to 
advance  itself  to  higher  stages  of  self-realization  and  self- 
purifying. 

The  same  claim  involves  the  conviction  that  Christianity  is 


476  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

able  to  appropriate,  reconcile  with  itself,  and  incorporate  into 
its  doctrine  and  life,  man's  growing  knowledge  of  religious 
truth,  increased  refinement  and  elevation  of  feeling,  and  puri- 
fied morality.  Organized  Christianity  must  undoubtedly  in 
the  future  leave  science,  art,  and  in  a  larger  measure  than 
heretofore,  ethics  and  social  life,  to  a  free  and  independent  de- 
velopment. That  is  to  say,  henceforth  it  cannot  assume  by  its 
dogmas  to  control  scientific  discovery,  or  the  statement  and 
applications  of  natural  laws.  It  can  no  longer,  as  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  absorb  the  devotion  and  practice  of  the  arts.  Neither 
can  it  assume  to  control  directly  the  functions  of  civil  govern- 
ment, or  the  associations  and  procedure  of  society.  But  the 
spirit  of  the  religion  of  Christ  may  be  expected  to  recognize  all 
truth  as  God's  truth,  all  beauty  as  the  revelation  of  the  all- 
beautiful  Being  of  Him  who  is  the  World's  Redeemer  (the 
"beauty  of  holiness  "  in  a  magnified  meaning  of  this  ancient 
phrase),  and  all  human  conduct  and  social  association  as  having! 
its  significance  in  the  effort  to  obey  Him,  whose  righteous  and 
loving  command  is  life,  and  to  disobey  whom  is  to  enter  upon 
the  course  of  death  eternal.  It  is  this  magnanimity  and  hos- 
pitality toward  all  the  good  of  truth,  beauty,  and  righteousness 
that  must  take  the  place  of  the  original  exclusiveness  and  nar- 
row intensity,  which  was  natural  and  inevitable  under  its 
original  conditions ;  if  Christianity  is  to  become  in  the  future 
the  religion  of  all  mankind. 

A  certain  rare  combination  of  the  rational  with  the  practical, 
of  the  ideal  and  mystical  with  the  effectual  direction  of  the 
daily  life  of  the  individual  and  society,  of  what  is  universally 
human  with  the  possibility  of  adaptation  to  what  is  peculiar  to 
particular  races  and  even  to  particular  persons,  has  been 
throughout  its  history  a  distinctive  merit  of  the  Christian 
religion.  This  same  qualification  is  a  distinction  in  greater  or 
less  degree  of  all  those  religions  which,  like  Buddhism,  Islam, 
and  Christianity,  ]jave  proclaimed  salvation  for  man  as  man ; 
and  these   same   religions  have   been   conquering   and  wide- 


THE  FUTURE  OF  RELIGION  477 

spreading  world-religions.  But  the  traditional  sayings  of  the 
founders  of  these  three  great  missionary  movements,  given  as 
parting  commissions  to  their  disciples,  are  not  without  signif- 
icance in  determining  the  differences  of  the  three.  According 
to  Buddha  the  future  of  his  religion  was  to  be  characterized 
by  a  succession  of  "  Great  Uproars," — (1)  the  Cyclic  Uproar, 
(2)  the  Buddha-Uproar,  and  (3)  the  Universal-Monarch- 
Uproar.  The  method  of  meeting  these  times  of  emergency  was 
to  be  passive ;  and  the  final  result  was  pessimistically  con- 
ceived. Muhammad,  on  the  contrary,  thouglit  to  leave  to  liis 
followers  a  finished  religion,  that  could  be  enforced  in  his 
name  upon  a  resisting  and  unbelieving  world.  '*  This  day," 
said  he  at  the  "Farewell  Pilgrimage,"  "have  I  perfected  your 
religion  unto  you."  But  Jesus,  recognizing  the  futility  of  all 
attempts  to  realize  in  Judaism  a  universal  mission,  and  fore- 
seeing more  clearly  than  Buddha  the  ages  of  conflict  and  strife 
wliicli  were  before  the  new  religion  lie  had  been  divinely  com- 
missioned to  establish  among  men,  planted  his  word,  as  a  seed, 
a  kernel  containing  the  spirit  and  norm  of  a  higher  and  ever 
higher  form  of  moral  and  spiritual  life.  This  seed  he  bade  his 
followers  disseminate,  as  truth  should  always  be  disseminated, 
— not  by  violence  but  by  inspired  proclamation  of  the  word. 
He  then  looked  confidently  into  the  future  to  see  it  winning 
the  acceptance  and  controlling  the  lives  of  the  multitude  of 
mankind. 

In  a  word,  we  find  in  the  nature  and  past  liistory  of  what 
we  may  call  —although  confessedly  in  a  somewhat  loose  and 
indefinitti  way — "  essential  Christianity,"  the  grounds  for  a  ra- 
tional hope  in  the  future  realization  of  its  claims  to  univei*sal- 
ity,  to  Ik?  tlw  religion  of  mankind.  In  saying  this  it  is  to  1x3 
noticed  that  by  a  long  circuit  around-about,  our  thouglit  h;i.s 
returned  to  the  point  from  which  the  invosticration  l>e£r;ui.  A 
certain  ideal  standard  for  the  evaluation  of  religion  w;is  then 
set  up.  This  stand.ird  took  account  of  the  a(la[)tation  of  any 
group  of  religious  beliefs,  sentiments,  and  practices,  to  satisfy 


478  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  needs  of  human  nature,  to  abide  in  history,  and  to  grow 
in  correspondence  to  the  advancing  and  rising  life  of  man.  Nor 
did  the  standard  admit  of  religion  being  in  an  attitude  of  pas- 
sivity only  toward  this  ideal.  On  the  contrary,  it  must  itself 
be  the  great  force  in  the  progressive  realization  of  its  own  ideal ; 
and  the  ideal  was  complex,  including  the  ideals  of  truth, 
beauty,  goodness,  and  happiness.  How  it  is  that  religion — 
and  above  all  other  religions,  the  Christian  religion — pro- 
gressively corresponds  to,  and  contributes  toward,  these  ideals, 
as  a  living  force  in  history,  our  examination  should  now  have 
made  more  clear.  The  more  permanent  factors  and  universal 
values  of  religious  experience  have  been  tested  by  the  method 
of  philosophy.  The  result  has  been  to  establish  faith  and  hope 
as  rational  postulates.  As  to  proof — in  the  strictest  meaning 
of  the  word — for  the  claims  to  universal  and  absolute  validity 
of  so-called  "essential  Chris  tianit}',"  we  cannot  do  better  than 
to  say  in  the  words  of  another^ :  ''  From  the  point  of  view  of 
philosophy  the  absoluteness  of  Christianity  is  an  hypothesis,  like 
any  other  philosophic  theory,  which  must  be  tested  by  its  abil- 
ity to  explain  all  the  facts,  and  as  to  the  truth  or  falsehood  of 
which  the  final  decision  belongs  to  the  future."  But  to  him 
who  accepts  the  content  of  its  faith  and  has  experience  of  its 
inner  life,  this  religion  converts  what  might  otherwise  remain 
a  faint  but  rational  hope  into  a  firm  and  joyful  conviction. 

1  Professor  William  Adams  Brown,  The  Essence  of  Christianity,  p.  310. 


CHAPTER  XLIV 

IMMORTALITY   OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

During  the  entire  history  of  man's  religious  development  the 
belief  in  an  existence  after  death  has  been  connected  witli  the 
body  of  beliefs  and  practices  that  have  determined  the  very 
nature  of  religion.  In  the  cruder  and  more  primitive  stages  of 
this  development  the  connection  has,  indeed,  been  neither  con- 
sciously intimate  nor  logical  and  consistent.  Examination  from 
the  psychological  point  of  view  shows,  however,  that  the  same 
instinctive  and  impulsive  sources  of  emotion,  and  the  same  ac- 
tivities of  imagination  and  intellect,  in  which  religion  has  its 
rise,  form  also  the  springs  for  the  belief  in  the  immortality  of 
the  individual.  An  unreflecting  spiritism  has  its  origin  in  the 
projection  of  the  idealized  human  spirit  into  the  environment, 
filling  it  with  a  variety  of  superhuman,  invisible  spiritual  pow- 
ers. The  projection  of  the  same  human  spirit  into  time  future 
originates  a  belief  in  its  existence  after  death.  In  fetishism, 
totemism,  and  in  most  forms  of  animal  and  nature  worship,  as 
well  as  in  all  ancestor-worship  or  worship  of  deilied  man,  the 
same  process  supports  hi  their  interdependent  relations  the  be- 
lief in  invisible  spirits  and  the  belief  in  the  continued  existence 
of  the  human  sj)irit  after  bodily  death.  Only  in  some  such 
meaning  of  the  words,  then,  can  this  carlit^st  form  of  belief  in 
a  future  existence  for  the  individual  be  called  a  religious  belief 
at  all. 

In  the  higher  forms  of  religion  tlie  connection  just  referred 
to  Ixjcomes  more  consciously  inliniat<3  and  logiral.  Still  later, 
the  belief  in  the  continued  cxisioacu  of  the  humaii  spirit  aflor 


480  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

death  rises  to  the  significance  of  an  important  religious  doc- 
trine, and  becomes  related  to  tlie  conception  of  God  as  Ethical 
Spirit  in  a  manner  powerfully  to  affect  the  Avhole  logical  struc- 
ture and  moral  significance  of  man's  religious  beliefs  and  prac- 
tices. In  these  various  degrees  of  its  development,  and  of  its 
dependent  connection  with  the  development  of  religion  among 
mankind,  we  may  therefore  say  that  this  belief  if  not  strictly 
universal,  is  exceedingly  wide-spread  and  extends  back  into  the 
remotest  history  of  the  race.  Wundt,  indeed,  affirms  ^  that  all 
primitive  races  believe  that  the  spirit  is  a  sensible  existence 
separable  from  the  body.  This,  although  not  convertible  with 
the  belief  in  immortality,  is  contributory  to  it.  Neither  must 
the  separability  of  the  soul  be  confounded  with  its  immateriality. 
In  remarking  upon  the  religion  of  the  Greeks,  Rohde  declares  ^; 
"  We  have  sufficient  reason  to  conjecture  that  a  soul-cult,  an 
honoring  of  the  spiritual  essence  which  lies  hidden  in  man,  and 
after  his  death  separates  itself  for  an  independent  existence, 
belonged  in  the  land  of  the  Greeks,  as,  indeed,  everywhere  on  the 
earth,  to  the  most  ancient  practices  of  religion."  According  to 
D'Alviella,'^  the  primitive  custom  of  burying  the  dead  in  the 
uterine  posture,  and  the  wide-spread  primitive  belief  in  one's 
own  double,  are  evidences  of  the  existence  of  this  tenet  of  faith 
in  prehistoric  times.  Indeed,  the  characteristic  mental  attitude 
of  savage  and  primitive  man  is  the  complete  absence  of  doubt. 
As  Von  den  Steinen  says  ^  of  the  native  of  Brazil :  '*  He  knows 
he  will  not  die." 

As  to  the  details  of  the  belief  in  the  soul's  existence  after 
death,  what  can  be  said  of  one  people  can  generally  be  said  of 
all  who  are  in  the  same  stage  of  race-culture.  But  so  mani- 
fold and  confused  are,  of  necessity,  the  beliefs  connected  with 
a  subject  about  which  nothing  can  be  known  by  immediate  ex- 

1  Ethics,  I,  p.  100. 

2  Die  Religion  der  Griechen,  Rectoratsrede,   Heidelberg,   1894.    (Italics 
ours.) 

3  Origin  and  Growth  of  the  Conception  of  God,  pp.  15  and  78/. 
*  Naturvolker   Zentral-Brasiliens,   p.   348/. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  481 

perience,  that  no  definite  and  concordant  doctrine  of  immor- 
tality is  anywhere  to  be  found.  A  medley  of  views,  arising  from 
similar  motifs^  is  everywhere  existent. 

The  problem  of  destiny  as  connected  with  the  beliefs  of  reli- 
gion concerns  either  the  individual  man  or  the  race ;  and  these 
two  forms  of  the  problem,  while  interdependent,  are  not  by  any 
means  tlie  same.  On  the  one  hand,  it  might  be  that  the  species 
should  live  on  indefinitely  and  perhaps  make  progress  toward 
some  worthy  social  ideal ;  but  that  the  individual  members  of 
it  shoukl  drop  out  of  conscious  existence, — that  is,  should 
cease  to  be  individuals  at  all.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  it  might 
be  that  the  race  should  quite  perish  from  the  face  of  the  earth; 
but  that  some,  or  all,  of  its  individual  members  should  continue 
to  exist  under  other  and  non-earthly  conditions  of  existence. 
In  examining  the  doctrine  of  the  immortixlity  of  the  individual 
as  a  tenet  of  religion,  therefore,  it  is  necessary  to  know  from 
the  beginning  what  that  doctrine,  in  its  most  highly  developed 
form,  means  to  assert.  For  as  Professor  Royce  has  well  said  ^ : 
*' Now  when  we  ask  about  the  immortality  of  man,  it  is  the 
permanence  of  the  individual  man  about  which  we  mean  to  in- 
quire, and  not  primarily  the  permanence  of  the  human  t3^pe,  as 
such,  nor  the  permanence  of  any  other  system  of  laws  or  rela- 
tionships." Yet  more  definitely  said :  It  is  the  reality  of  the 
existence  of  a  Self,  of  the  self-conscious  life,  connecting  itself 
by  recognitive  memory  with  its  own  past,  and  so  related  in  char- 
acter to  this  past  as  to  constitute  a  continuous  self-develop- 
ment, about  the  continuance  of  which,  after  death,  religion  is 
chiefly  concerned. 

It  lias  already  been  said  that  the  same  impulsive  and  emo- 
tional stirrings  and  activities  of  intellect  and  imagiiiaticui  in 
wliieh  religion  ari.ses  give  birth  to  the  l>e lief  in  a  soul  separable 
from  tlie  body  and  so  capable  of  Ix'iiig  permanently  continued 
in  existence  after  the  deatli  of  the  bod  v.      But  the  causes  for 

>  Soc  the  entire  ver>'  miK^cstivo  discussion  of  "The  Place  of  the  Self  in 
lieing,"  in  The  World  and  the  Individual,  ♦  ♦  lecture  VII. 

31 


482  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  individual,  and  for  the 
characteristic  development  of  this  belief,  may  be  conveniently 
grouped  under  the  following  three  heads:  (1)  The  psycho- 
logical and  metaphysical ;  (2)  the  social  and  sympathetic ;  and 
(3)  the  more  definitely  ethical  and  religious,  in  the  higher 
meaning  of  these  words.  This  belief  seems  to  man  to  be  de- 
manded in  order  to  explain  the  phenomena  of  his  dreams,  and 
those  other  psychic  manifestations  which  indicate  the  separa- 
bility of  the  soul  from  the  body.  It  also  seems  needed  to 
satisfy  his  emotional  and  affectional  relations, — such  as  fear, 
reverence,  pride,  love,  etc., — toward  members  of  his  family,  his 
circle  of  friends,  or  his  tribe.  And,  finally,  the  same  belief 
affords  to  his  maturer  reflection  additional  ground  for  faith  in 
a  moral  and  religious  significance  of  the  world-order ;  and  for 
an  ethical  conception  of  the  World-Ground.  In  the  reverse 
process  of  reasoning,  man's  ethical  view  of  God  and  of  the 
divine  manifestation  in  the  world  of  human  experience  nour- 
ishes and  supports,  on  grounds  of  moral  reason,  the  belief  in 
immortality. 

When  we  speak  of  the  psychological  and  metaphysical  source 
of  man's  belief  in  immortality,  the  addition  of  the  latter  of 
these  two  terms  is  no  matter  of  indifference,  either  to  the 
historical  account  or  to  the  rationality  of  the  argument.  In- 
deed, a  recognition  of  the  activity  and  validity  of  the  "  onto- 
logical  consciousness  "  is  indispensable,  if  the  causes  of  this 
belief  are  to  be  converted  into  reasons  or  rational  arguments 
in  its  defense.  That  objective  and  constitutive  action  of  the 
mind  of  man  which  endows  the  Self  and  things  with  their  r^eal 
heing^  is  at  the  base  of  the  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  Self 
as  truly  as  it  is  at  the  base  of  all  scientific  and  religious  beliefs. 
The  consciousness  of  being  real,  bestows  upon  the  flowing 
stream  of  conscious  states,  with  their  fringes  of  past  memories 
and  anticipations  of  the  future  and  with  their  referableness  to 
the  same  Subject  as  its  objects,  certain  enduring  qualities  neces- 
sary to  its  Arirsich-Sein  ("  In-itself-being  ")  and  its  Fur-sich'Sein 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  483 

("  For-self-being").  Thus  when  in  dreams,^  and  in  other  ex- 
periences, primitive  man  becomes  aware  of  the  familiar  presence 
of  the  dead,  or  of  those  whose  bodily  selves  are  known  to  be  far 
away,  he  explains  the  phenomena  by  the  persistent  existence  in 
reality  of  the  active,  self-constituting  Ego.  For  the  same  rea- 
son he  cannot  think  of  himself  as  dead  ;  for  to  think  of  himself  at 
all,  he  must  be  tlioroughly  alive, — self-conscious  and  thoughtful, 
— an  attentive  Subject  picturing  himself  as  an  object  for  himself. 
The  force  of  these  natural  impulses  to  the  belief  in  the  im- 
mortality of  the  individual  is  made  yet  more  impressive  by  the 
fact  that  quite  universall}^  among  some  people,  and  extensively 
among  others,  a  continuance  of  conscious  existence  is  regarded 
as  a  thing  greatly  to  be  dreaded  and  deplored.  "  Life  is  like 
a  horrid  corpse  bound  to  the  neck,"  is  the  dictum  of  Buddhism 
in  a  land  where  the  only  known  conditions  of  continued  exis- 
tence are  fraught  with  pain  and  suffering ;  where  the  tempera- 
ment of  the  people  is  not  favorable  to  strenuous  endurance  of  the 
struggle  upward  ;  and  where  religious  superstitions  are  mainly 
terrifying.  This  fact  goes  far  toward  depriving  of  its  cogency 
the  so-called  argument  for  immortality  from  the  satisfaction 
of  the  soul's  irrepressible  longings.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
same  fact  shows  how  man's  imagination  persists  in  prolonging 
existence,  even  in  spite  of  tlie  desire  to  cease  from  the  pain 
and  strife  of  life.  Hence  the  pathetic  meditation  of  the  Bud- 
dhistic faith :  - — 

"  Subject  to  birth,  old  age,  disease, 

Extinction  will  I  seek  to  find, 

Where  no  decay  is  ever  known. 

Nor  death,  but  all  security." 

»  It  is  easy,  however,  to  attribute  too  much  influence  to  dreams  in  form- 
ing the  Ixilief  in  the  immortiility  of  the  individual.  As  Kohde  has  remarked, 
although  the  separability  of  soul  from  body,  and  the  endowment  of  every 
living  thing  with  the  dual  existence  which  man  knows  himself  to  have,  is 
Homeric  enough,  the  Homeric  world  is  not  troubled  with  ghost.s,  and  the 
soul  after  the  l>o<iy  is  burned  docs  not  any  longer  show  itself  even  in  dreams 
(Psj'chc,   pp.   S;    10/.). 

>  Compare  Buddhism  in  Translations,  p.  6. 


484  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Or,  in  the  more  bitter  form  of  complaint,  the  same  fact  ex- 
presses itself  as  in  Marlowe's  Dr.  Faustus  : — 

"  Why  wert  thou  not  a  creature  wanting  soul  ? 


All  beasts  are  happy, 

For  when  they  die, 

Their  souls  are  soon  dissolved  in  elements; 

But  mine  must  live  still  to  be  plagued  in  hell." 

In  this  connection  it  becomes  clear  that,  from  the  psychologi- 
cal and  metaphysical  points  of  view,  the  expectation  of  living 
on — or  even  of  living  again,  so  to  say — is  an  integral,  constant, 
and  essential  factor  in  the  Self's  consciousness  of  really  being 
alive  at  all.  If  the  Ego  could  not  project  itself  into  the  future, 
by  activity  of  imagination  and  intellect  suffused  with  the  ever- 
present  "  ontological  consciousness,"  it  could  not  in  the  present 
serve  the  purposes  of  that  self-knowledge  which  characterizes 
a  real  Self.  This  self-projection  into  the  near  future  we 
achieve,  however,  every  time  we  lie  down  to  sleep,  expecting 
whether  sleep  be  dreamless  or  not,  to  awake  in  the  morning. 
The  awakening  itself  may  easily  be  imagined  under  greatly 
changed  conditions,  both  internal  and  appertaining  to  the  states 
of  the  soul,  or  external  and  having  to  do  with  the  soul's  physi- 
cal and  social  environment.  But  to  imagine  the  extinction 
of  the  Self  is  simply  to  refuse  to  apply  imagination  to  the  case 
at  all ;  it  is  to  rest  in  a  purely  negative  attitude  toward  the 
future. 

The  intelligent  recognition  of  the  significance  and  value  of 
the  "  ontological  consciousness  "  in  the  performances  just  de- 
scribed, implies  a  relatively  advanced  stage  of  culture.  On  the 
contrary,  the  social  and  sympathetic  causes  of  the  belief  in  the 
continued  existence  of  the  individual  after  death  are  power- 
fully operative  in  all  stages  of  civilization.  The  emotions  of 
fear,  resentment,  awe  before  the  mystery  of  the  invisible  or  un- 
intelligible, and  the  domestic  and  friendly  affections  of  pride, 
love,  admiration,  and  desire  for  communion,  furnish  strong 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  485 

motives  to  induce  and  to  foster  this  belief.  Univei'sally  among 
primitive  and  savage  peoples,  and  as  well  as  among  multitudes 
of  civilized  communities,  the  dead  are  feared.  They  are  natu- 
rally endowed  with  more  or  less  of  those  superhuman  qualities 
which  the  invisible  and  divine  spiritual  beings  inherently  pos- 
sess. They  continue  to  exist — so  it  is  imagined  and  believed 
— in  relations  toward  the  living  that  are  similar  to  those  which 
were  maintained  when  they  were  themselves  alive.  But  per- 
haps these  spirits  of  the  dead  may  have  wrongs  to  set  right  or 
to  avenge ;  or  they  may  have  needs  and  desires  to  be  satisfied 
which  it  is  difficult  for  their  survivors  to  meet  or  even  to  antic- 
ipate ;  then,  indeed,  they  must  be  feared.  If,  however,  they 
have  been  objects  of  pride,  admiration,  or  affection,  while  they 
have  lived  as  men  among  men  ;  why  should  they  not  be  con- 
ceived of  as  still  living  in  such  relations  as  to  satisfy,  perhaps 
in  increased  measure,  the  same  feelings  of  pride,  admiration, 
and  affection? 

It  is  for  these  reasons  that  the  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the 
individual  is  so  universal  in  its  logical  and  necessary  connection 
with  ancestor-worship.^  Propitiatory  offerings  to  ancestoi-s,  as 
though  they  were  in  active  and  living  relations  with  men,  are 
everywhere  to  be  found.  The  worship  of  the  Fravashis  ^  among 
the  Iranians,  of  the  Pitris  among  the  Hindus,  the  iva-fianara 
among  the  Greeks,  the  luferiae  or  Parentalia  among  the  Romans, 
are  in  evidence  on  this  point.  Among  prehistoric  men,  as  in 
the  relics  at  Aurignac,  somewhat  doubtful  evidences  of  the 
sanje  belief  are  found.^  The  pathetic  outstretching  of  vain 
hands  toward  the  dreaded  or  the  beloved  dead,  even  among 
the  most  degraded  savages,  reveals  the  same  work  of  human 

1  Compare  Renouf,  Origin  and  Growth  of  Rclipion,  p.  121)/- 

2  The  Fravashis  were  heavenly  tyjics,  or  "spiritual  doubles"  of  all  cre- 
ated things, — gods,  men,  mountjiins,  rivers,  cic.  Each  man  had  his  own 
frnvofihi,  or  genius.  So  the  Ka,  or  disemlKKlied  spirit,  of  the  Egj'ptian. 
A'a— the  <f8u>Xoi',  or  imago,  or  ghost,  or  genius. 

>See  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  Antiquity  of  .Man,  p.  193  (?);  but,  per  contra,  Mr. 
Dawkins,  in   Nature,   IV,  p.   208. 


486  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

imagination  prompted  by  the  human  heart.^  In  the  tombs  of 
Egypt,  at  the  foot  of  the  memorial  tablet  which  invariably 
faced  the  East,  there  lay  a  tablet  of  granite,  limestone,  or  ala- 
baster, which  was  designed  to  hold  the  offerings  for  the  dead. 
Thus,  as  elsewhere,  belief  in  immortality,  and  honor  approach- 
ing, if  not  amounting  to  worship,  were  bound  together  in  an- 
cient Egypt.^  The  spirit  of  this  belief  is  finely  caught  as  we 
read  the  inscription  of  Rameses  II  at  Abydos.  *'  Awake  !"  he 
addresses  his  deceased  father,  Seti  I,  "  raise  thy  face  to  heaven, 
behold  the  sun,  my  father  Mineptah,  thou  who  art  like  God. 
Here  am  I  who  make  thy  name  to  live."  Connected  with  this 
worship  was  the  belief  that  the  most  terrible  curse  which  could 
light  upon  a  man  was  to  liave  ''  no  son  or  daughter  to  give  him 
the  lustral  water."  Just  as  the  Brahman  believes  that  his  en- 
trance into  Nirvana  depends  upon  his  having  a  son  to  perform 
the  funeral  rites. 

The  third  class  of  causes  which  operate  to  produce  the  be- 
lief in  the  immortality  of  the  individual  are  the  more  defin- 
itively ethical  and  religious.  These  causes  come  into  efficient 
operation  later,  and  only  as  the  moral  and  religious  develop- 
ment of  man  attains  a  certain  stage.  But  they  furnish  the 
more  permanent  grounds  for  belief ;  they  are,  indeed,  the  only 
secure  reasons  for  a  rational  faith  and  hope.  In  this  case,  as 
in  all  others,  the  defensible  character  of  the  religious  belief  is 
chiefly  dependent  upon  the  ethical  development  which  has 
been  given  to  its  form.  The  conception  of  righteousness  as 
somehow  seated  at  the  heart  of  the  Universe,  the  impression 
that  the  cosmic  existences,  forces,  and  processes,  are  somehow 
interpretable  in  terms  of  a  moral  World-order,  stimulates  and 
strengthens  the  belief  in  immortality.  As  man's  conception 
of  God  in  terms  of  Ethical  Spirit  becomes  established  in  human 

1  Compare  the  Chapter  on  "Life  and  Death"  in  Jevon's  Introduction  to 
the  History  of  Religion;  and  see  Nassau,  Fetichism  in  West  Africa,  p.  52/. 

2  See  the  Articles  of  E.  de  Rouge  in  the  Revue  Arch^ologique  (New  Series), 
vol.  I;  Etudes  sur  le  Ritual  Funeraire  des  Anciens  Egypiiens. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  487 

belief,  the  ethical  considerations  bearing  upon  the  tenet  of  his 
own  continued  existence  become  more  influential.  In  the 
highest  form  of  the  doctrine,  it  is  the  moral  Being  of  God,  and 
the  divine  work  with  the  race  as  their  Moral  Ruler  and  Re- 
deemer, which  guarantees  that  sort  of  a  future  for  the  indi- 
vidual man  in  which  the  hope  of  immortality  becomes  a  reason- 
able hope.  In  fact,  it  is  the  presence  or  absence,  the  degree 
and  the  development,  of  these  ethical  factors  which  more  than 
anything  else,  characterizes  and  differences  this  belief  as  it  ex- 
ists amongst  different  peoples  and  in  different  eras  of  their 
history.  There  is,  therefore,  no  little  historical  support  to  the 
claim  of  Schopenhauer,  that  if  man  could  sustain  the  belief  in 
his  own  unending  existence  without  belief  in  the  existence  of 
God,  then  "  faith  in  the  existence  of  God  would  cool."  But 
the  more  rational  point  of  view  reverses  this  dictum  and  finds 
in  the  kind  of  God  whose  existence  faith  accepts,  the  power  to 
sustiiin  the  belief  in  at  least  the  possibility  of  an  unending  ex- 
istence for  the  "sons  of  God." 

Now  since  tlie  activity  and  value  of  the  "  ontological  con- 
sciousness "  makes  itself  felt  throughout  the  entire  process  of 
religious  belief,  the  particular  conception  held  as  to  the  charac- 
ter of  the  entity  called  "  soul,"  conditions  the  belief  in  its  im- 
mortality in  a  very  important  way.  What  really  is  this  soul, 
wliicli  is  regarded  as  somehow  separable  from  its  body,  and  so 
capable  of  continuance  after  death  ?  Beyond  the  earlier  stages 
of  an  "  unreflecting  spiritism,"  three  principal  answers  have 
}>een  given  to  this  inquiry  by  the  reflective  tliinking  of  man- 
kind. Of  these  one  affirms  that  the  soul  is  an  indestructible 
entity,  whicli  ma}'  Ixj  conceived  of  as  continuing  in  existence 
without  manifesting  those  activities  of  self-consciousness,  re- 
cognitive  memory,  and  rational  and  etliical  self-iletfrmination, 
in  which  the  very  essence  of  the  self-known  Self  consists.  Its 
Ijcing  may  l>e  conceived  of  as  persisting  after  the  analogy  of 
the  i)erm;inent  material  elements,  or  units  of  force.  Anotlier 
opinion   aflinns   that  tlie  soul   is   really  only   a  succession  of 


488  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

psychoses, — the  character  of  which  is,  however,  self-like,  be- 
cause it  falls  under  the  law  of  habit  and  thus  has  a  sort  of  self- 
perpetuating  quality.  Or,  in  the  third  place,  the  soul  may  be 
conceived  of  as  just  that  reality  which  it  knows  itself  to  be, 
and  wliich  consists  in  its  being  actually  the  self-determining 
subject  of  its  own  peculiar  forms  of  functioning.  To  be  self- 
conscious,  to  exercise  recognitive  memory,  and  rational  infer- 
ence, and  to  shape  conduct  in  the  pursuit  of  moral  and  sesthetical 
ideals, — this  is  really  to  be  a  Self. 

So  vague  and  shifty  are  the  notions  of  the  nature  of  the 
soul's  reality  which  are  in  general  held  by  savage  and  primi- 
tive peoples,  that  their  beliefs  make  it  impossible  to  determine 
which  one  of  the  several  souls  possessed  by  any  individual  is 
going  to  be  preserved.  Indeed,  it  seems  easily  possible  that 
several  of  them  should  continue  at  least  for  a  time  in  existence 
after  death.  The  savage,  in  his  effort  to  account  for  all  his 
experiences,  readily  endows  himself  with  the  necessary  number 
of  souls.  The  natives  of  West  Africa^  are  the  possessors  of  no 
fewer  than  four  spirits  each  ;  the  Sioux  have  three  souls  ;  some 
Dakota  tribes  rejoice  in  the  sacred  number  four ;  and  the 
Navajos,  according  to  Dr.  Matthews,  think  of  one  of  their  souls 
as  a  sort  of  "  astral  body."  Other  tribes  of  savages  are  proud 
of,  or  troubled  with,  no  fewer  than  six  or  seven.  Taoism  in 
China  provides  each  individual  with  three  souls ;  one  remains 
with  the  corpse,  one  with  the  spirit's  tablet,  and  one  is  carried 
off  to  purgatory.  And  lest  the  civilized  sceptic  scoff  at  this, 
he  may  be  asked  to  remember,  not  only  the  threefold  designa- 
tion of  the  Hebrews,  of  the  animal  QnephesK)^  the  human 
(j'uacK)^  and  the  divine  (nesJiamaJi)  soul,  but  also  Plato's 
thumos,  epithumia,  and  novs  ;  or  the  various  conscious,  subcon- 
scious or  "subliminal,"  and  dual,  triple,  or  quadruple  selves 
of  some  modern  psychologists.  From  the  only  tenable  point 
of  view,^  as  it  seems  to  us,  so  far  as  the  interests  of  the  re- 

1  See  Nassau,  Fetichism  in  West  Africa,  p.  52/. 

2  Compare  the  author's  Philosophy  of  Mind,  chapters  IV-VI. 


IMIVIORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  489 

ligious  doctrine  of  immortality  are  concerned,  the  modem 
scientific  divisions  of  the  classes  of  phenomenal  experience  are 
no  more  important  than  are  those  belonging  to  the  centuries- 
old  spiritism  of  savage  and  primitive  tribes.  It  is  enough  to 
secure  a  reasonable  hope  in  the  permanency  of  one  soul,  if  only 
that  one  be  enough  of  a  soul.  And  this  sufficiency  of  values 
can,  from  tlie  nature  of  the  case,  belong  only  to  the  rational 
and  moral  Self,  with  its  developing  forms  of  life  in  the  realiza- 
tion of  its  legitimate  ideals. 

The  doctrine  of  Atman  in  ancient  and  modern  Brahmanism, 
the  mediaeval  and  scholastic  pre-Kantian  conception  of  the  soul, 
and  much  of  both  the  popular  and  the  scholastic  theology  of 
to-day,  require  a  conception  of  the  soul's  entity  in  the  first  of  the 
three  meanings  of  the  term.  This  conception,  however,  when 
logically  carried  through,  naturally  allies  itself  either  wltli  the 
doctrine  of  transmigration  in  some  of  its  cruder  forms,  or  with 
the  theories  of  pantheism  touching  the  absorption  of  the  human 
individual  soul-entity  into  the  all-embracing  entity  of  the  Ab- 
solute. From  the  point  of  view  of  modern  psychology  the 
conception  itself  is  as  invalid  scientifically  as  the  conclusion 
derived  from  it  is  unsatisfactory  to  the  aesthetical  and  ethical 
sentiments  of  value.  Buddhism  was  in  the  right,  in  an  ex- 
ceedingly important  way,  when  it  rejected  in  the  interests  of 
morals  and  of  religion  the  Briihmanical  tenet  of  an  imperish- 
able and  substantial  soul-entity,  separable  from  all  contingencies 
of  change  in  its  environnu^nt  and  independent,  for  its  continued 
existence,  of  its  own  conscious  and  voluntary  manner  of  bcliav- 
ior.  Hut  it  committed  a  fatiil  mistake  when  it  put  forth  the 
doctrine  that  the  substantial  existence  of  tlie  soul  is  a  mere 
name  for  tlie  presence  of  tlie  "five  attuliment-groups"  :  "  In 
the  al)sohiU*  sense,"  said  its  doctrine,  '*  there  is  no  living  en- 
tity tliere  to  U)V\\\  a  b;usis  for  sui:h  figments  as  '  I  iiiii,'  or  '  1.' " 
Tlie  Eifo  thus  becomes  only  a  "  serial  succession  ";  one  element 
perishes  and  another  arises.  lUit  this  doctrine  of  Buddhism, 
like   that  of   Br.ihnianism   which   it  w;is   intended  to  displace, 


490  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

is  based  upon  a  quite  insufficient  and  even  false  conception  of 
the  nature  of  that  unity  and  permanency  of  existence  which 
makes  the  so-called  "  serial  succession  "  a  really  existing  Self. 

The  dependence  in  a  rational  way  of  the  belief  in  the  im- 
mortality of  the  individual  upon  the  conception  held  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  soul's  reality  is  intimate  and  unalterable.  If  the 
reality  of  man's  Selfhood  consists  in  the  imj)erishable  existence 
of  some  unconscious  *'  soul-stuff  "  ;  or  if  it  is  exhausted  by  a 
mere  series  of  conscious  or  half-conscious  states,  that  may  at 
any  time  cease  to  be  articulated  by  self-consciousness,  memory, 
and  rational  inference,  into  the  life-history  of  a  true  Self ;  then, 
in  either  of  these  cases,  we  cannot  identify  its  existence  after 
death  with  an  immortality  that  is  satisfactory  to  the  tenets  of 
monotheistic  religion,  or  with  an  ideal  of  the  future  that  calls 
for  an  exercise  of  rational  faith  and  hope.  More  definitely 
stated  :  A  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  individual  must,  on 
the  one  hand,  satisfy  the  modern  scientific  views  as  to  the  soul's 
nature  and  relations  to  bodily  existence  ;  and  on  the  other  hand, 
it  must  take  its  place  in  a  system  of  religious  beliefs  which  em- 
phasizes the  significance  and  value  of  the  self-conscious  and 
rational  life  of  personal  spirit  in  the  progressive  realization  of 
its  ideals.  Neither  of  these  conditions  is  fulfilled  by  that  view 
of  the  soul's  entity  which  destroys  or  impairs  the  conception 
of  it  as  a  true  Self.  It  is  the  Self  that  is  immortal^  if  immor- 
tality  await  man  in  any  form  whatever. 

Neither  is  a  merely  figurative  permanency,  in  the  "  life  of  the 
race,"  or  by  way  of  influence  over  others  (as,  for  example,  is 
indicated  in  George  Eliot's  hymn,  beginning :  "  O  might  I  join 
the  choir  invisible"),  a  real  immortality  of  the  individual. 

The  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  individual,  like  all  reli- 
gious beliefs,  has  been  the  subject  of  development  in  dependence, 
more  or  less  immediate  and  complete,  upon  the  advance  of  race- 
culture.  In  determining  the  stages  and  rapidity  of  this  ad- 
vance, the  principal  factors  have  been  the  prevailing  concep- 
tions (1)  as  to  the  nature  and  value  of  the  Self ;  (2)  as  to  the 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  491 

Being  of  God  and  his  relations  to  men  ;  and  (3)  as  to  the 
social  conditions  and  ideals  which  evoke  the  feelings  and  judg- 
ments of  value.  Here,  as  in  general  with  human  efforts  to 
picture  the  invisible  and  the  ideal,  no  rigid  application  of  any 
so-called  laws  of  the  evolution  of  the  belief  can  be  made  in 
reliance  upon  the  facts  of  history.  A  certain  order  may,  how- 
ever, be  said  to  control  the  appearance  and  the  prevalence  of 
the  various  forms  of  this  belief.  They  may,  therefore,  be  ar- 
ranged under  the  following  four  heads  ;  although  they  are  not 
actually  kept  distinct  or  free  from  various  admixtures  with 
one  another. 

The  lowest  historical  form  of  the  belief  in  the  continued  ex- 
istence of  man's  soul  after  death  affirms  of  it  some  shadowy 
and  ghost-like  character.  In  this  form,  the  belief  fits  in  with 
that  stage  of  religious  development  which  was  characterized  as 
an  unreflecting  spiritism.  Indeed,  the  belief  in  immortality  at 
this  stage  is  akin  to  the  belief  in  ghosts,  and  is  motived  chiefl}' 
by  fear.  Although  some  of  the  dead  may  be  supposed  to  be, 
as  some  of  the  living  certainly  are,  more  powerful  than  othei-s, 
and  better  situated  and  conditioned  in  the  spirit  world,  any 
division  among  the  dead  does  not  appear  to  rest  upon  ethical 
grounds.  Hence  ancestor-worship  may  form  a  hindrance  to 
the  rise  of  the  doctrine  of  immortiility  toward  a  higher  ethical 
and  spiritual  form.  To  make  the  condition  of  the  dead  depend 
upon  their  relation  to  the  passions  and  affections  of  the  living, 
wliether  fear,  pride,  hatred,  or  love,  is  certainly  injurious  to  the 
conception  of  a  moral  world-order,  extending  into  invisible 
regions  of  time  and  space. 

A  next  liigher  stage — at  least  in  some  respects — of  tliis  l)e- 
liff  tiikes  the  form  of  the  opinion  that  all  souls  pass  upon  death 
into  some  other  einlxxlii.'d  manifestation  ;  and  that  the  character 
of  this  transmigration  depends  somehow  upon  considerations 
realized  in  the  life  of  those  souls  previous  to  death.  The  more 
elaborate  and  detinite  doctrine  of  the  transmigration  of  souls 
seems  to  have  arisen,  especially  in  ancient  Kgvpt  and  in  India, 


492  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

in  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries  B.  c. ;  and  to  have  resulted 
from  a  development  of  the  ethical  views  of  the  next  life  mingled 
with  a  basis  of  totemism  and  animal-worship.  In  Egypt  this 
doctrine  appears  to  have  been  first  taught  as  a  means  of  re- 
warding the  good  and  then  of  punishing  the  bad ;  in  India  of 
both  alike.^  Thus  one  Upanishad  declares  :  "AH  who  depart 
from  this  world  go  to  the  moon.  In  the  bright  fortnight  the 
moon  is  gladdened  by  their  spirits ;  but  in  the  dark  fortnight 
it  sends  them  forth  into  new  births.  Verily  the  moon  is  the 
door  of  heaven.  Him  who  rejects  it,  it  sends  on  be3'ond  ;  but 
whoso  rejects  it  not,  him  it  rains  down  upon  this  world.  And 
here  is  he  born  either  as  a  worm,  or  a  grasshopper,  or  a  fish,  or 
a  bird,  or  a  lion,  or  a  boar,  or  a  serpent,  or  a  tiger,  or  a  man, 
or  some  other  creature,  according  to  his  deeds  and  his  knowl- 
edge." ^ 

The  belief  in  the  continued  existence  of  the  soul  as  a  human 
individual,  and  under  conditions  dependent  for  their  character 
upon  "  deeds  done  in  the  body,"  represents  a  still  higher  stage 
of  development.  In  connection  with  this  form  of  belief,  the 
growth  of  moral  sentiment  from  which  it  proceeds  results  in 
either  adding  special  miseries  to  the  wicked  in  the  underground 
world  common  to  all ;  or  else,  finally,  in  separating  locally  the 
abode  of  the  good  dead  from  that  of  the  wicked  dead.  The 
modification  of  this  view  which  is  introduced  by  the  Buddhis- 
tic doctrine  of  Karma  emphasizes,  indeed,  the  doctrine  of  retribu- 
tion, but  in  such  a  manner  that  it  can  scarcely  be  said  to  apply 
to  the  human  individual.  For  Buddhism  holds  that  no  soul 
which  corresponds  to  the  true  conception  of  a  Self  exists,  either 
before  or  after  death;  what  persists  after  death  is  only  "the  ac- 

1  The  doctrine  of  transmigration  is  a  natural  and  almost  inevitable  deduc- 
tion from  the  belief  of  Animism;  and  some  anthropologists  have  therefore 
argued  for  its  universality.  Rhys  Davids  denies,  however,  that  any  trace 
of  it  is  found  among  the  Aryans  previous  to  their  migration  into  India; 
and  also  that  the  Aryan  races  generally  held  to  the  belief.  See  Origin  and 
Growth  of  Religion,  p.  74;  and  the  quotations,  p.  76/. 

2  Rhys  Davids,  Ibid.,  p.  81/. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  493 

cumulated  results  of  all  your  actions,  words,  and  thoughts." 
Yet  popular  Buddhism  has  its  doctrine  of  heaven  and  hell,  as 
vividly  pictorial  and  intensely  realistic  as  that  of  any  other  of 
the  greater  world-religions. 

A  still  greater  maturity  of  philosophical  reflection  leads  to 
the  belief  that  the  character  of  the  soul's  future  after  death  de- 
pends upon  the  relations  it  will  sustain  to  the  Absolute  Being 
from  which  its  existence  is  derived.  In  a  word,  the  immortal- 
ity of  the  individual  is  secured  by,  and  subsists  in,  the  relation 
which  it  permanently  assumes  toward  its  own  Source  or 
Ground.  Thus  the  immortality  of  the  Pantheism  of  the 
Brahmanical  type  is  conceived  of  as  an  absorption  of  the  soul 
of  the  individual  into  Atman,  or  the  World-Soul,  from  which  it 
came  forth.  The  immortality  of  the  enlightened  Buddhist  is 
Nirvana,  or  the  cessation  of  that  otherwise  endless  succession  of 
conscious  states,  rendered  miserable  by  unsatisfied  desires,  in 
which  the  necessity  of  Karma  involves  the  soul.  Metem[> 
sychosis  is  now  the  object  of  dread,  as  the  prospect  of  it 
extends  indefinitely  into  the  remotest  future.  But  when  re- 
flection puts  a  sufficiently  higli  estimate  upon  the  ethical 
values  involved,  and  adopts  the  conceptions  of  God  as  perfect 
Ethical  Spirit,  and  of  man  as  potentially  a  son  of  God,  then  it 
is  a  moral  and  spiritual  union  with  the  Divine  Being,  in  a  king- 
dom of  redeemed  and  blessed  spirits,  which  furnishes  the  high- 
est type  of  the  soul's  immortality  and  which  becomes  the 
object  of  the  soul's  highest  endeavor. 

Among  peoples  which  have  attained  a  considerable  degree  of 
civilization,  the  most  various  forms  of  belief  may  coexist — either 
as  distributed  somewhat  defniitely  amongst  the  correspond- 
ing grades  of  existing  culture,  or  as  a  rather  confused  mingling 
of  elemtmts  from  tliem  all.  Even  among  rude  triln^s  there  are 
traces  to  be  found  of  higher  views ;  and  whether  such  views 
are  survivals  from  a  far  dist^mt  and  better  past  or  are  due  to 
the  latter  reflections  of  the  more  thoughtful  few,  it  is  not  al- 
ways possible  to  say.    The  more  general  theory  of  the  continu- 


494  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ance  of  soul-life  affirms  that  each  tribe  or  clan  somehow 
lives  on  as  it  knows  life  to  be  when  men  are  associated  in 
bodily  shapes.  Wounds,  sicknesses,  mutilations,  etc.,  are  carried 
over  into  the  beyond.  As  a  belief  which  was  perhaps  origin- 
ally connected  with  burial  in  the  earth,  the  dead  inhabit  the 
vast  and  gloomy  and  indefinite  "  underground."  Thus  was 
conceived  of,  the  Hebrew  Sheol  and  the  Babylonian  "land 
whence  none  return."  But  the  place  of  souls  may  be  on  the 
summit  of  some  mountain,  as  on  the  top  of  Kina  Balu  in 
Borneo,  or  of  Gunjung  Danka  in  West  Java.  It  may  be  over 
the  mountains,  or  over  the  seas ;  as  with  the  Chilians,  who 
located  among  the  peaks  of  Mexico  the  joyous  garden  of 
Tlalocan,  where  their  dead  ancestors  were.  Some  peoples,  quite 
below  the  Hebrews  in  their  conception  of  Deity,  have  been 
altogether  in  advance  of  them  in  their  conceptions  of  the  future 
life  of  the  individual.  When  men  come  to  regard  a  separation 
of  the  dead  as  demanded  on  moral  grounds,  the  division  is 
facilitated  by  the  natural  phenomenon  of  the  setting  sun. 
Through  the  gate  which  its  arrival  in  the  Western  horizon 
seems  to  open,  the  blessed  may  enter  into  a  place  of  light  and 
happiness,  which  is  made  all  the  more  attractive  through  its 
striking  contrast  with  the  darkness  and  gloom  of  the  under- 
world. Natural,  however,  as  it  appears  to  suppose  that  the 
different  views  of  the  fate  of  the  soul  after  death  must  be 
connected  with  the  treatment,  by  burial  or  by  burning,  of  the 
corpse,  the  supposition  is  not  borne  out  by  all  the  facts. 
Among  the  Teutons  in  the  North,  both  customs  seem  to 
have  been  practiced  without  any  clear  demarcation  of  either 
topography  or  periods  of  time.^  And  the  same  thing  is  sub- 
stantially true  of  India. 

From  time  immemorial  in  ancient  Egypt  the  "darling  idea  " 
of  the  people  was  the  continued  existence  of  the  souls  of  their 
dead.^     An  elaborate  doctrine  of  immortality  is  proved  by  in- 

1  See  De  la  Saussaye,  The  Religion  of  the  Teutons,  p.  57/. 

2  Comp.  Erman,  .^gypten  und  ^Egyptisches  Leben  im  Altertum,  pp.  413^. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  405 

Bcriptions  on  the  walls  of  pyramids  of  the  Fifth  and  Sixth  Dy- 
nasties,  that  are  as  old  as  3000  B.  c.  But  as  to  the  How?  and 
the  Where?  there  were  no  clearly  sustained  and  universally 
recognized  views.  Some  tliought  the  departed  souls  were  in 
heaven  among  the  stars ;  others  that  they  were  with  the  birds 
on  the  trees,  or  with  their  bones  under  the  ground.  Some  held 
that  the  dead  changed  their  form,  and  existed  "  to-day  as  herons 
and  to-morrow  as  beetles,  and  the  day  after  as  a  lotus  blossom 
on  the  water."  The  part  that  survived  was  the  spirit  or  Ka^ — 
a  self-existent  entity  which  dwells  in  man  and  by  its  presence 
bestows  upon  him  life  and  health  and  joy.  For  the  uses  of 
this  spiritual  entity  the  body  must  be  preserved,  in  order  to 
become  again  its  dwelling-place.  But  the  Ka  itself  needed 
food  and  drink  to  preserve  it,  and  to  prevent  hunger  and  thii'st. 
In  the  thought  of  the  ancient  Egyptians,  a  combination  of  mag- 
ical with  ethical  elements  determined  the  condition  of  the  dead, 
whether  good  or  bad.  Besides  the  righteousness  of  the  Osiris, 
the  candidate  for  a  happy  immortality  needed  to  know  the 
names  of  the  bolt  on  the  door,  of  the  panels,  the  sill,  the  lock, 
the  door-posts  and  the  door-keeper,  of  the  ''  Hall  of  Truth." 
Moreover,  the  continuance  of  the  complete  man  in  a  satisfied 
life  depended  upon  getting  together  the  component  parts  which 
had  become  separated  by  death.  And  although  in  the  later 
doctrine  the  K<i  had  become  so  completely  identified  with  the 
Self  that  even  the  king  is  represented  as  presenting  offerings 
and  petitions  to  it,  fis  to  his  own  personality,  and  as  receiving 
the  reply:  "I  give  unto  tliee  all  Life,  all  Stability,  all  Power, 
all  Hcaltli,  and  all  Joy;  and  although  even  the  gods  of  Kgyi)t 
liad  tlieir  Knx^  which  were  emlx)died  and  represented  in  their 
statues  ;  still  there  were  at  least  two  other  inmiortal  parts  of 
the  individual  man.  One  of  these  wjis  liis  heart  or  ah.  The 
immortal  heart  of  man,  which  stood  in  somewhat  the  same  rela- 
tion to  the   material   heart  as  tlie  Ka  to  tlie  whole  l)ody, '  left 

'  Sec  Wicdcrnianii,  The  Ancient  Epj'ptian  Doctrine  of  the  Immortality 
of  the  Soul,  p.  29;  and  Hcligion  of  the  Ancient  Egj-ptiana,  p.  240/. 


496  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

him  at  death  and  journeyed  to  the  "  Abode  of  hearts."  An 
artificial  scarabseus  of  hard  greenish  stone,  to  represent  the 
provisional  heart  between  death  and  the  renewal  of  the  com- 
plete life,  was  the  symbol  of  the  expected  event  of  resurrec- 
tion. The  third  immortal  part  of  man  was  his  Ba^  or  soul ;  and 
this  was  symbolized  by  a  human-headed  bird  (or  later,  a  ram- 
headed  scarabseus),  which  at  death  flew  away  to  be  with  the 
gods.  The  same  thought  was  set  forth  among  the  Greeks  by 
a  winged  human  figure  ;  and  among  the  Romans  by  a  butterfly. 
That  higher  moral  and  spiritual  Self-hood,  however,  which 
needed  somehow  to  be  preserved  if  the  belief  in  immortality 
was  to  become  both  rational  and  satisfying  to  the  higher  senti- 
ments and  ideals,  was  provided  for  by  the  conception  of  Osiris. 
The  Egyptians  called  their  dead  Osiris.  For  as  the  first  Di- 
vine King  of  Egypt,  when  overcome  by  death,  descended  into 
the  under-world,  but  afterwards  rose  from  there  and  went  to 
dwell  with  the  gods  and  to  lead  the  deathless  life  of  the  blessed, 
so  each  man  might  hope  it  would  be  with  his  Osiris.  There- 
fore the  soles  of  the  mummy's  feet  were  excised,  that  the  mire 
of  earth  might  be  removed  and  that  he  might  tread  the  Hall 
of  Judgment  with  pure  feet.  The  view  of  the  retribution  he 
was  sure  to  meet  was,  indeed,  emphasized  chiefly  by  the  "  Neg- 
ative Confession":  "  I  have  not  robbed,  nor  murdered,  nor  lied, 
nor  caused  any  to  weep,  nor  injured  the  gods  " — and  so  on. 
The  punishment  of  the  wicked  consisted  in  withholding  his  heart 
and  other  immortal  parts ;  his  real  Self  accordingly  perished.^ 
But  the  state  of  blessedness  with  which  the  good  were  re- 
warded, in  the  Egyptian  doctrine,  was  not  an  absorption  into 
the  All,  nor  a  condition  corresponding  to  the  Buddhist  Nirvana. 
In  his  independent  individuality  he  continued  on  with  the 
gods,  being  especially  devoted  to  the  successful  and  happy  pur- 
suit of  agriculture  in  the  "  fields  of  the  blessed."  Thus  in  the 
later  doctrine,  at  least  of  the  Egyptians,  transmigration  of  souls 

1  On  the  "  Doctrine  of  the  Heart"  see  Wiedermann,  Religion  of  the  Ancient 
Egyptians,  p.  285/. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  497 

was  not  compulsory ;  nor  was  it  a  reason  for  depressing  fear. 
And  in  general  the  Egyptian  doctrine  of  immortality  is  in  most 
favorable  contrast  with  most  of  the  pre-Christian  views.  The 
lofty  ethics  of  the  Egyptian  "  Book  of  the  Dead  "  has  already 
been  referred  to  in  another  connection. 

The  prosaic  and  intensely  practical  character  of  the  Chinese 
appears  in  their  prevalent  belief  as  to  the  continued  existence 
of  the  dead.  Still  their  doctrine  is  by  no  means  wanting  in 
strongly  ethical  factors.  The  view  of  Taoism  promised,  as  a 
reward  for  a  prolonged  discipline  of  the  body,  that  it  should 
undergo  a  sort  of  refining  or  ^w«8i-dematerializing  process 
which  would  render  it  unassailable  by  death.  Its  doctrine  is 
like  that  of  Egypt,  a  species  of  conditional  immortality.  At 
the  ferry  of  death,  "  the  profane  multitude,  not  being  suffi- 
ciently concentrated  to  resist  the  inroads  of  decay,  vanish  into 
air,  and  cease  to  be  ;  while  the  favored  few,  by  dint  of  perse- 
vering effort,  subdue  their  animal  nature  and  weave  its  fibres 
into  a  compact  unity  that  defies  its  destruction."  Of  this  view 
Dr.  Martin  ^  says :  "  It  is  scarcely  possible  to  represent  the  ex- 
tent to  which  this  idea  fires  the  minds  of  the  Chinese  for  ages 
after  its  promulgation,  or  to  estimate  tlie  magnitude  of  its 
consequences."  If  we  may  trust  the  tradition,  however,  Con- 
fucius himself  refused  to  lend  his  authority  either  for  or 
against  the  belief  in  the  immortxlity  of  the  individual.  He 
was  an  agnostic  on  grounds  of  practical  results.  A  discoui-se 
attributed  to  him  makes  him  teach:  "If  1  sliould  say  the  dead 
have  knowledge  of  the  services  rendered  to  them,  I  fear  the 
filial  would  neglect  their  living  parents  in  their  zeal  to  serve 
their  decefised  ancestors  ;  if,  on  the  contrary,  I  should  say  the 
dead  have  not  such  knowledge,  I  fear  lest  the  unfilial  should 
tlirow  away  the  ])odies  of  thoir  parents  and  leave  tluMii  un- 
buiied."  ^      While  the  earlier  doctrine  of  retribution  punished 

•  Lore    of   Cathay,    p.    1.S2. 

'In  the  Chia  Vii— h  collection  the  authority  of  which,  however,  ia  not 
above    suspicion. 

32 


498  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  wrong-doer  in  this  life,  and  let  the  residue  of  retribution 
fall  upon  his  descendants  after  his  death,  the  Taoism  and 
Buddhism  of  the  popular  religion  of  China  to-day  is  a  frightful 
doctrine  ofpurgatorj^  and  hell,  with  only  a  chance  of  obtaining 
by  special  and  expensive  ceremonies  the  deliverance  of  the 
three  souls  and  perhaps  also,  their  reunion  "  for  an  ascent  to 
the  region  of  the  Immortals  or  for  a  new  career  of  trial  on 
earth."  ^ 

In  China — probably  above  all  other  countries, — the  develop- 
ment of  the  moral  elements  in  the  belief  in  immortality  has 
been  checked  and  degraded  by  the  increased  prominence  given 
to  the  benefits  of  ancestor-worship.  According  to  the  highest 
and  purest  notions  the  rule  of  personified  and  deified  Heaven 
was  over  all  spirits,  and  could  not  be  bribed  or  influenced  to 
do  wrong.  Speaking  of  It,  the  words  of  the  young  King 
Ch'ang  in  the  twelfth  century  b.  c.  assure  us  : 

"  There  in  the  starlit  sky 
It  round  about  us  moves, 
Inspecting  all  we  do, 
And  daily  disapproves 
What  is  not  just  and  true." 

But  later  a  tyrannical  or  notoriously  wicked  imperial  or  other 
ancestor  could  apparently,  when  dead,  be  put  upon  an  equality 
with  the  virtuous  by  being  worshipped  and  prayed  to  for  suc- 
cour and  help. 

Of  the  ancient  Babylonian  and  Assyrian  belief,  we  may 
affirm  with  Professor  Jastrow,  it  "  does  not  transcend  the  be- 
lief characteristic  of  primitive  culture  everywhere,  which  can- 
not conceive  of  the  possibility  of  life  coming  to  an  absolute 
end."^  Even  ''  a  divine  fiat  could  not  wipe  out  what  was  en- 
dowed with  life  and  the  power  of  reproduction."     The  dead 

1  See  Legge,  The  Religions  of  China,  pp.  189 ff.  This  author  affirms,  how- 
ever, that  he  has  never  found  the  doctrine  of  "reunion"  discussed  in  any 
Taoist  book. 

2  On  the  entire  subject,  see  his  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  chap. 
XXV. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  499 

were  accordingly  thought  of  as  contiuumg  their  existence  in  a 
great  cave  underneath  the  earth, — in  the  "house  of  Aralu." 
Another  name  for  this  abode  was  Shualu,  or  a  "  place  of  in- 
quiry " ;  for  the  dead  have  superior  means  of  information 
about  certain  matters,  and  can  aid  living  men  by  answering 
their  questions  and  by  furnishing  them  with  oracles.  Indeed, 
the  dead  are  often  also  closely  associated  with  the  divine 
beings,  or  even  identified  with  them.  The  nether  world  is, 
however,  a  joyless  prison;  and  although  a  goddess  may  escape, 
no  man  who  enters  there  can  ever  return.  This  view  is  quite 
similar  to  that  of  Sheol  as  depicted  in  the  classic  passages, 
Isaiah  xiv,  9-20  and  Ezekiel  xxxii,  18-31. 

The  continued  existence  from  which  the  religion  of  Buddha 
desired  to  furnish  a  way  of  escape  was  a  ceaseless  succession 
of  births,  deaths,  and  rebirtlis — a  doctrine  of  inescapable  me- 
tempsychosis controlled  by  the  principles  of  Karma.  But  this 
inability  to  die  was  the  very  antithesis  to  immortal  life  con- 
sidered as  the  promise  and  goal  of  a  religion  of  salvation  such 
as  Buddhism  designed  to  be.  The  immortal  life  was  Nirvana, 
which  in  its  more  primitive  form  is  thus  described :  "  When 
the  fire  of  lust  is  extinct,  that  is  Nirvana  ;  when  the  fires  of 
infatuation  and  hatred  are  extinct,  that  is  Nirvana ;  wlun 
pride,  false  belief,  and  all  other  passions  and  torments  are 
extinct,  that  is  Nirvana."  ^  In  another  passage,*  in  that  ex- 
ceedingly touching  account  of  the  Death  of  the  Buddha  (so 
like,  in  some  respects,  to  Plato's  account  of  the  death  of  Soc- 
rati's),  "  The  Blessed  One  "  is  made  to  speak  as  follows  : 
*'  Enough,  Ananda,  do  not  grieve,  nor  weep.  Have  I  not  al- 
ready told  you,  Ananda,  that  it  is  in  tlie  very  nature  of  all 
things  nt'ar  and  dear  unto  us  that  we  nuist  divide  ourselves 
from  them,  leave  tliem,  sever  ourselves  from  them?  How  is  it 
possible,  Ananda,  tliat  whatever  has  been  l)orn,  has  come  into 
being,  is  org;ini7.«'(l  and  porishablo,  should   not   perish?     That 

>  Sec  Hiuklhism  in  Tnm.slation,  Intrfxluction  to  Jutaku,  i,  00. 
*  Namely,    Miihii-l'arinibbiinu-Suttu,    v.    53. 


500  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

condition  is  not  possible."  .  .  .  .  "  And  now,  O  priests,  I  take 
my  leave  of  you ;  all  the  constituents  of  being  are  transitory ; 
work  out  your  salvation  with  diligence." 

And  this  was  the  last  word  of  the  Tathagata.  And  then  we 
are  told  how  the  Buddha  entered  a  series  of  four  trances ;  and 
rising  from  the  last  of  these  he  passed  through  the  four  realms 
of  (1)  "  the  infinity  of  space,"  (2)  "  the  infinity  of  conscious- 
ness," (3)  "the  realm  of  nothingness,"  (4)  "the  realm  of 
neither  perception  nor  yet  non-perception ; "  and  rising  from 
this  "  he  arrived  at  the  cessation  of  perception  and  sensation." 
But  it  was  only  after  traversing  in  reverse  order  the  same  four 
realms  and  four  trances,  that  "  immediately  The  Blessed  One 
passed  into  Nirvana."  The  saint  who  reaches  this  release  from 
consciousness  is  "  deep,  immeasurable,  unfathomable,  like  the 
mighty  ocean."  To  say  that  he  is  either  reborn  or  not  reborn, 
does  not  "fit  the  case."^  This  "incomparable  security,"  free 
from  birth,  this  "incomparable  peaceful  state,"  is  the  sum- 
raum  honum  of  Buddhism — its  fulfilled  promise  of  immortal 
life.  Just  as  the  individual  trance  is  a  sort  of  "  temporary 
equation  made  between  Karma  and  nullity,"  whereby  subject- 
ive terms  are  wiped  out  and  only  nothingness  remains,  so 
when  the  condition  is  regarded  as  permanent,  it  is  called  Nir- 
vana. 

It  was,  however,  neither  the  Semitic  nor  the  Oriental,  but 
the  rather  the  Greek  conception  of  the  immortalit}^  of  the  indi- 
vidual, which,  through  its  essential  agreement  with  the  teach- 
ings of  Jesus  Christ  as  to  the  value  of  the  soul  and  of  its  life 
of  trust  and  love  toward  God,  the  Father,  and  through  its 
early  incorporation  into  the  body  of  Christian  beliefs,  seemed 
for  centuries  most  fit  to  endure  the  assaults  of  science  and  of 
a  sceptical  and  agnostic  philosophy.  To  say  this  is  not  to  deny 
the  existence,  contemporaneously  or  even  earlier,  of  similar 
lofty  views  of  the  soul's  nature  and  destiny,  in  India  and,  es- 
pecially, in  ancient  Egypt;  nor  is  it  easy  to  solve  the  historical 

1  So   the   Majjhima-Nikaya,   i,   487. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  601 

problem  by  deriving — one  from  the  other  of  these  countries — 
any  of  the  particular  factors  of  tliese  views.  Notions  similar  to 
those  of  the  Greek  philosophy  existed  in  Egypt  centuries  before 
Plato.  And  when  much  later, — about  300  B.  c. — Megasthenes 
was  in  India,  he  found  those  "  most  estimable  "  philosophers, 
the  Brahmans,  "  discussing  with  many  words  concerning 
death ;"  and  to  liim  they  seemed  in  many  things  to  "  hold  the 
same  opinions  with  the  Greeks."  Although  they  regarded 
"  death  as  being,  for  the  wise,  a  birth  into  real  life — into  the 
liappy  life,"  they  weaved  in  myths,  just  as  Plato  did,  ''in  re- 
gard to  the  soul's  immortality,  judgment  in  hell,  and  such 
things."  ^  In  spite  of  all  such  similarities,  however,  and  quite 
independently  of  the  answer  to  questions  of  historical  priority, 
it  was  Grt^ek  thinking  which  wrought  into  terms  corresponding 
with  Greek  philosophy  those  conceptions  v/hicli  seemed  to  the 
Church  Catholic  also  to  correspond  best  witli  the  truthfulness 
and  practical  effectiveness  of  a  certain  aspect  of  its  own 
teachings  respecting  the  nature  and  destiny  of  the  individual 
human  soul. 

From  time  immemorial  the  Greeks  regarded  man  as  a  dual 
l)eing,  body  and  soul ;  and  the  soul  as  an  existence  which 
could  be  separated  from  the  body,  and  leaving  it  behind  could 
go  away  to  another  place.^  This  dual  way  of  tliinking  of  every 
living  being  might  be  extended  not  only  to  single  objects,  bub 
even  to  the  elements  out  of  which  the  earlier  philosophers 
built  up  the  world  of  experience.  On  the  one  hand,  these 
elements  seemed  to  have  souls ;  and  the  Cosmos  which  thoy 
built  up,  since  it  was  a  rational  and  beautiful  unity,  wiis 
worthy  of  l)eing  endowed  with  a  World-Soul.  Hut,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  soul  had  some  sort  of  shadowy  corporeality.  In 
the  IIomeri(;  tiuies  and  nmcli  later  amonix  the  Greeks  the  life 
of  the  individual  soul  after  death  of  the  body    had   nuuh  the 

1  Quoted  from  Srhw{iijl)cck's  Megasthenes,  by  Ilopkiiiii,  Keligioiia  of  In- 
dia,   p.  1/. 

'Soc  Kohdc,  Psyche,  pj).   1-62. 


502  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

same  colorless  character  which  has  nearly  or  quite  universally 
prevailed  at  a  certain  stage  in  the  evolution  of  this  belief. 
With  them,  as  with  the  Egyptians,  the  love  of  life  and  the 
feeling  that  it  was  good  to  be  in  conscious  existence  always 
availed  to  prevent  the  gloomy  and  depressing  dread  of  im- 
mortality, and  the  frightful  doctrine  of  metempsychosis,  as  these 
maintained  themselves  in  India.  And  the  effort  to  realize  this 
hope  of  a  better  life  after  death,  upon  condition  of  compliance 
with  certain  moral  and  spiritual  requirements,  was  a  compara- 
tively early  development  with  this  people.  As  Rohde  has 
shown,^  what  was  needed  was  not  so  much  a  strengthening  of 
the  belief  in  the  fact  of  continued  existence  after  death ;  for 
the  Greeks  already  shared  with  all  other  peoples  in  this  belief. 
The  need  was,  the  rather,  of  some  assurance  as  to  the  content  of 
this  life ;  as  to  a  preferred  form  of  existence  for  those  who 
fitted  themselves  to  realize  the  hope  of  it.  The  change  to  the 
higher  point  of  view  was  in  large  measure  due  to  the  spread 
and  the  democratizing  of  the  Eleusinian  Mysteries.  "The 
testimony  of  all  antiquity,"  says  one  writer,'^  "  to  the  inspiring 
and  uplifting  influence  of  the  mysteries  is  impressively  unani- 
mous ;  no  voice  is  raised  in  criticism."  A  certain  marked 
resemblance  exists  between  the  confidence  in  the  overcoming 
power  of  spiritual  life  which  these  mysteries  produced  and  the 
triumphant  note  of  the  Apostle  Paul  in  his  Epistle  to  the 
Corinthians.  According  to  the  Orphic  theology,  too,  the  body 
is  a  prison  house;  but  the  soul  is  akin  in  its  nature  to  God. 
If  purified,  then,  this  spiritual  part  of  man  is  fitted  and  destined 
for  a  union  with  the  Divine  Spirit.  The  rites  of  the  mysteries 
were,   therefore,  not  mere  ceremonials,   or   magical  perform- 

^  Ibid.,  pp.  256^.  According  to  Rohde,  the  confidence  which  those  ini- 
tiated into  the  mysteries  had  as  to  a  blessed  life  for  themselves  after  death 
was  not  derived  from  any  doctrine,  whether  taught  by  a  form  of  words  or 
of  ceremonial,  that  confirmed  their  belief  in  the  natural  indestructibility  of 
the  soul.  It  was  the  promise  of  blessed  life  for  the  initiated  which  gave  to 
the  mysteries  their  hold  upon  the  mind. 

2  Wheeler,  Dionysus  and  Immortality,  p.  32. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  503 

ances  :  they  Avere  symbolic  of  that  inner  purification  Tvliich  is 
the  beginning  and  the  pledge  of  immortal  life.  "  Blessed  is 
he,"  says  Pindar,  "  who  having  seen  these  rites  goeth  under 
the  earth.  He  knoweth  the  end  of  life  ;  he  knoweth,  too,  its 
god-disposed  beginning."  "  Tlirice-happy  they  among  mortals," 
exclaims  Sophocles,  "  who  depart  into  Hades  after  their  eyes 
have  seen  these  rites.  Yea,  for  them  alone  is  there  a  life ; 
for  all  other  men  there  is  ill."  ''  He  who  arrives  there  after 
initiation  and  purification,"  declares  Plato,  "  will  dwell  with 
the  gods." 

It  was  philosophy,  however,  which  by  its  reflections  upon 
the  everywliere-present,  architectonic  Life  of  the  World,  de- 
veloped among  the  Greeks  the  more  permanent  and  higher 
conception  of  the  nature  and  destiny  of  man's  soul.  With 
this  people  ''  immortal "  and  divine,  or  "  godlike,"  were  inter- 
changeable conceptions.  "  Immortality,"  says  Rohde,^  ''  is  the 
essential  predicate  of  God  and  only  of  God."  To  become  im- 
mortid,  tlierefore,  is  to  partake  of  the  Divine  Life.  Thus  the 
hylozoistic  doctrine  of  the  soul  became  the  forerunner  of  the 
Platonic  and,  then,  of  the  Christian  philosophic  conception. 

Indeed,  the  Platonic  philosopliy  of  the  soul's  nature  and  des- 
tiny may  not  improperly  be  said  to  have  been,  in  some  of  its 
most  important  factors,  the  doctrine  prevalent  in  Christian  the- 
ology almost  down  to  the  present  time.  Phito's  firmly  rooted 
belief  in  the  soul's  immortality  depends  upon  the  ontological 
and  necessary  priority  of  reason  to  matter;  it  is  also  essential 
in  order  to  make  reasonable  a  moral  view  of  the  worhl-order 
and  of  its  future  history.  For  the  whole  of  man's  life  is  a 
process  of  education  ;  but  tlie  process  is  only  begun  in  this 
life;  and  is  to  Ix?  carried  on  into  a  future  existence.  For  the 
individuiil  soul  there  are  in  his  doctrine,  as  in  the  doctrine  of 
the  Catholic  Church,  three  possibilities  :  tliose  wlio  have  been 
purified  by  virtu(;  and  kiiowledgcMvill  find  eternal  blessedness; 
aome  will  pass  at  death   into  a  state  of  purgatory  ;  others  will 

>  IVychc,  p.  29G. 


504  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

be  finally  condemned  without  hope  of  future  redemption.^  In 
other  respects,  indeed,  Plato's  doctrine  of  the  future  for  the 
individual  soul  differed  from  that  evolved  by  the  Cliristian 
Church.  But  it  can  scarcely  be  questioned  that  the  most  pow- 
erful outside  influence  in  developing  the  Christian  doctrine  of 
immortality  was  that  which  came  from  Greek,  and  especially 
from  the  Platonic  philosophy. 

If  it  were  not  for  the  connection  which  the  development  of 
the  belief  in  a  future  existence  for  the  individual  had  among 
the  early  Hebrews  with  the  entire  bod}^  of  beliefs  and  doctrines 
constituting  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament,  its  history 
would  scarcely  be  worthy  of  special  recognition.  Up  to  the 
beginning  of  the  third  century  B.  c.  the  Hebrew  conceptions 
of  the  state  of  the  dead — its  nature  and  relations  to  the  char- 
acter of  the  life  before  death — remained  in  the  crude  and  un- 
formed stage  characteristic,  for  example,  of  the  Homeric  age 
among  the  Greeks.  The  conception  of  Yahweh  had  indeed 
undergone  a  considerable  etliical  development ;  he  had  for 
some  time  been  worshipped  as  the  Living  God,  the  Giver  of 
life,  and  had  been  prayed  to  in  order  that  death  might  be 
averted.  Yet  this  shadowy  realm  of  the  dead  did  not  seem 
particularly  to  concern  Him.  The  gloomy  underworld  was  not 
thought  of  as  an  integral  part  of  Yahweii's  moral  dominion, 
over  which  He  reigned,  as  He  did  over  Israel  and  over  the 
heathen,  in  righteousness  and  fidelity.  Sheol  lay  outside  of 
the  Divine  Rule.^ 

This  backwardness  and  lack  of  interest  in,  and  this  absence 
of  intelligent  conceptions  of,  the  destiny  and  condition  of  the 
dead,  were  largely  due  to  two  causes  : — namely,  to  the  want  of 
any  development  in  psychological  instincts  and  philosophical 
insight ;  but  more  particularly,  to  the  fact  that  the  people  as  a 
whole  were  regarded  as  the  subject  of  religion,  and  the  object 

1  See  Sir  A.  Grant,  The  Ethics  of  Aristotle,  Introductory  Essay,  III. 

2  See  R.  H.  Charles,  A  Critical  History  of  the  Doctrine  of  a  Future  Life, 
p.  35/. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  505 

of  divine  care,  rebuke,  warning,  reward,  and  punishment.  In 
other  words,  the  thought  of  the  dignity  and  value  of  a  Self, 
and  of  the  importance  of  the  relations  to  the  Divine  Spirit  of 
the  individual  finite  spirit,  had  scarcely  dawned  upon  the  Jew- 
ish mind.  The  eschatology  of  Judaism  was  particularly  de- 
fective as  respects  the  individual.^  Even  in  the  writings  of 
Jeremiah,  with  their  predictions  of  retributive  judgment  for 
the  heathen  and  for  disobedient  Israel,  and  of  comfort  and  res- 
cue for  the  faithful,  and  in  spite  of  certain  strong  individual- 
istic tendencies,  it  is  still  "  a  people  "  that  are  for  the  future 
to  be  the  real  "  subject  of  religion."  ^ 

Influences  were  at  work,  however,  in  the  very  heart  of  Ju- 
daism which,  in  response  to  the  historical  experiences  of  the 
people,  could  not  fail  to  bring  about  an  improved  view  of  the 
relations  of  the  individual  to  God,  both  in  tliis  life  and  es- 
pecially in  the  future.  More  and  more,  under  the  influence  of 
that  marvelous  succession  of  prophetic  teachers,  did  the  Divine 
Being  appear  to  believing  minds  as  perfectly  righteous,  just  in 
keeping  the  covenant,  and  tenderly  merciful  and  graciously 
forgiving  as  well.  But  more  and  more  was  the  fate  of  the 
nation  impressing  upon  these  same  minds  the  truth  that  tlieir 
sad  fortune  was  Yahweh's  punishment  for  the  nation's  sins. 
This  punishment  culminated  in  the  exile.  *' With  the  destruc- 
tion of  Jerusalem  the  prophetic  threatening  had  been  com- 
pletely fulfilled,  and  at  the  same  time  the  prophetic  faith  had 
definitely  prevailed  over  the  popular  religion."^  In  two  re- 
spects an  iinportiint  change  in  the  attitude  of  the  believer's 
luiiid  toward  tlie  future  was  tlius  broue:ht  about.  The  whole 
body  of  tlie  Jewish  people  could  no  longer  expect  to  reap  the 
reward  f)f  their  fidelity  to  God  in  the  form  of  national  pros- 
perity ;   they  must   henceforth  1x5  treated  as  two  chisses, — the 

1  Compare   Charles,    Ibid.,   p.    19/. 

'  Sec    Smend,   I^hrbuch    der     Alttestameutlichen     Keligionageachichtc, 
p.  248/. 

>  Smend,    Ibid.,   p.    307. 


506  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

faithful  and  the  faithless,  the  righteous  and  the  wicked,  the 
godless  and  the  true  worshipper  of  the  true  God.  But  since 
there  is  now  nothing  more  in  sight  of  a  character  correspond- 
ing to  the  older  notions  of  good  or  evil  for  the  entire  people, 
that  need  be  feared  by  the  wicked  or  hoped  for  by  the  good, 
it  is  comfort  for  the  present,  tln-ough  hope  for  the  future, 
which  gives  the  key-note  to  prophecy.  The  individual  who 
trusts  the  righteousness  of  Yahweh  shall  no  longer  satisfy  his 
demand  for  a  theodicy  by  saying  that  the  "  fathers  have  eaten 
sour  grapes  and  the  children's  teeth  are  set  on  edge ; "  let 
him  the  rather  believe  that  "  the  soul  that  sinneth,  it  shall 
die,"  and  make  himself  righteous  by  turning  from  his  sins  in 
the  faith  that  thus  "it  shall  be  well  with  him."  With  such 
messages  as  these,  Ezekiel  and  the  later  prophets  became 
caretakers  of  the  souls  of  individuals,  and  held  out  to  them- 
selves and  to  others  the  hope  that  by  the  gathering  together 
of  those  who  repented  and  made  a  truly  spiritual  return  to 
God,  a  "new  Israel"  might  arise,  "a  remnant"  might  be 
saved.^ 

But  in  what  should  this  salvation,  now  promised  to  the 
righteous  few,  consist?  It  must  be  in  some  form  of  life;  in 
the  rescue  of  individuals  somehow  from  the  gloom  and  non- 
being  of  death.  For  how  can  the  dead  praise  God  ?  How  can 
those,  who  are  as  though  they  were  not,  magnify  the  Yahweh 
who  has  rescued  them  ?  Still — as  with  the  second  Isaiah  pre- 
eminently— the  prophetic  eye  sees  in  the  future  the  whole 
people  arising  to  a  new  and  glorious  heighth  of  national  life, 
through  the  regenerating  influence  of  the  faithful  remnant. 
For  "  Judaism  is  from  the  beginning,  and  remained  to  the  end, 
a  religion  of  hope."  This  form  of  future  welfare  was,  then,  to 
be  effected  by  Messianic  influences.  This  is  the  prophetic  solu- 
tion. A  much  less  confident  answer,  but  also  from  the  ethical 
point  of  view,  was  given  by  the  books  of  Wisdom  which  tried 
— with  a  trial  that  must  always  end  vainly — to  fill-full  the 

1  Compare  Charles,  Ihid.,  p.   101/. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  507 

future  of  the  righteous  with  promises  of  good  that  stop  with 
the  present  life.  Religion,  however,  can  never  be  converted 
into  mere  prudence. 

Another  movement  of  religious  thought  and  feeling,  which 
was  to  change  the  ideal  of  hope,  was  both  arising  from  within 
and  being  imported  from  without.  This  movement  was  the 
*' individualizing  of  religion  "  as  a  "pre-condition  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  people  "  such  as  God  demanded  for  his  own.^ 
Thus  the  hope  of  the  future  detached  itself  from  the  mass, 
considered  indiscriminately  and  without  reference  to  personal 
and  moral  worth,  and  attached  itself  to  the  personality  of 
the  few  devotees  of  righteousness.  They  were  the  men  who 
I'isked  all,  for  this  life  and  for  that  which,  if  anything,  is  be- 
yond death,  in  confidence  that  God  is  wholly  righteous,  is  in- 
deed the  perfection  of  Ethical  Spirit  in  wliom  the  man  of  the 
same  spirit  may  repose  a  hope  which  the  fear  of  extinction,  or 
of  the  gloomy  underworld,  cannot  destroy.  The  doctrine 
finally  evolved  by  this  individualizing  and  intensely  ethical 
movement,  in  order  to  meet  the  disappointed  hopes  of  the  pious, 
was  a  doctrine  of  the  resurrection. 

The  production  of  the  belief  in  a  resurrection  of  the  dead 
was  on  Jewish  soil  the  result  of  no  little  contest  with  unbelievei's, 
and  of  no  inconsiderable  heart-burning  and  painful  doubt  and 
struggle  with  temptation.  At  all  costs  the  dogma  of  Divine 
Righteousness  must  l)e  maintained,  unimpaired  in  its  control 
over  the  heart  and  the  life,  and  undiminished  in  moral  dignity 
and  C()iii[)rehensiveness.  But,  in  fact,  if  the  pious  often  had 
occasion  to  rejoice,  because  the  godless  were  visited  with 
retributive  justice  ;  the  latter  had  even  more  frequent  occa- 
sion for  scorn  and  mocking,  when  the  righteous  died  unfor- 
tunate and  foi-siikcn.  At  the  last,  however,  somehow  and  at 
some  time  in  the  future,  the  perfect  justice  and  goodness  of 
God  would  surely  Ik)  vindicated.     Such  a  \\o\^e  necessarily  pro- 

1  See  Smend,  Ibid.,  p.  450,  and  Comp.  Rousset,  Die  Religion  dea  Juden- 
tums  im  Neutestunientlichen  Zcitulter,  pp.  277/7- 


508  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION. 

jects  itself  beyond  death ;  out  of  the  dead  themselves  it  creates 
a  realm  for  its  own  realization  in  the  future. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  the  hope  of  the  resurrection  of  the 
dead  constitutes  the  most  significant  difference  between  the 
prophetic  ideal  of  the  Old  Testament  and  the  apocalyptic  ideal 
of  the  later  Judaism.^  This  expectation  not  only  divides  all 
men,  whether  living  or  dead,  into  classes  with  respect  to  their 
character  and  their  destiny ;  but  it  also  separates  the  entire 
history  of  man's  existence  into  two  great  seons.  As  an  ethical 
doctrine,  in  solution  of  the  problem  of  the  future  life  of  the 
individual,  it  indeed  emerged  relatively  late  in  Judaism.  But 
it  wrought  powerfully  and  widely  when  it  once  became  estab- 
lished. At  first  it  was  apparently  promulgated  as  a  divine 
judgment  upon  the  inhabitants  of  the  earth  who  did  not  glorify 
God,  and  a  call  to  the  righteous  to  trust  Him  as  their  ever- 
lasting strength ;  it  was  also  a  promise  that  those  in  the  dust 
who  did  thus  trust  should  hear  a  voice  calling  them  to  arise,  to 
awake,  and  sing  (Isaiah  xxiv — xxvii).  But  in  Daniel  (xii,  2) 
the  dogma  is  put  forth  that  certain  individuals  at  least  shall 
have  a  resurrection :  ''  Many  of  those  that  sleep  in  earth's 
dust  shall  awake,  some  to  everlasting  life,  others  to  scorn  and 
everlasting  shame."  It  is,  however,  the  yet  later  Apocalyptic 
writings  of  Judaism  which  for  the  first  time  in  perfectly  defi- 
nite form  announce  the  expectation  that  all  the  dead — those  on 
the  earth,  and  in  Sheol,  and  in  hell — shall  arise. 

In  spite  of  opposition,  the  belief  in  the  resurrection  of  all 
the  dead  seems  to  have  established  itself  as  a  dogma  throughout 
Palestine  and  to  have  become  the  faith  of  multitudes  of  the  people. 
*'  The  Gospels  and  the  Acts  show  us  plainly  that,  at  the  time 
of  the  life  and  work  of  Jesus  and  his  disciples  this  stage  of  the 
development  of  the  Jewish  religion  had  been  reached."  ^  In 
the  popular  belief,  however,  the  characteristics  and  conditions 
of  this  new  life  were  conceived  of  in  a  gross  and  materialistic 
fashion.     Eating  and  drinking,  being  free  from  labor,  pain,  and 

1  So  Bousset,  Ibid.,  p.   255.  2  Quoted  from  Bousset,  Ibid.,  p.  26L 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  509 

sickness,  and  wandering  by  pleasant  streams  and  in  green 
meadows,  were  then,  as  they  are  to-day  among  multitudes  of 
Christian  believers,  the  objects  of  the  popular  desire  and  hope. 
Only  some  of  the  more  spiritual  of  the  Rabbis  would  have  an- 
ticipated the  truth  of  Paul's  declaration  (Rom.  xiv,  IT)  :  "  The 
kingdom  of  God  is  not  meat  and  drink ;  but  righteousness, 
and  peace,  and  joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost."  Everlasting  life  had 
its  foil  in  everlasting  damnation ;  to  happiness  and  light  and 
healthful  life  were  opposed  darkness,  nothingness,  or  pain  of 
burning  and  other  tortures.  That  is  to  say,  at  last  and  most 
tardily  of  all  the  greater  religions,  Judaism  had  developed  a 
doctrine  of  the  immortality  of  the  individual  upon  a  quasi- 
ethical  basis  of  the  individual's  relations  in  this  life  to  the  Ob- 
ject of  religious  faith  and  worship.  The  same  process  of  indi- 
vidualizing and  democratizing,  which  had  been  applied  to  tlie 
other  religious  beliefs  and  practices  of  Judaism  (as,  e.  //.,  in 
the  substitution  of  the  service  of  the  Synagogue  for  that  of  the 
temple),  had  moulded  this  belief  also.  "  The  religious  develop- 
ment of  the  later  Judaism  had  prepared  the  way  for  the  '  high- 
strung  '  individualism  of  the  Gospel.  But,  indeed,  the  Prophet 
and  Master  must  first  come,  who  with  the  magical  might  of 
his  personality  could  stir  the  sleeping  forces  to  action  and  en- 
ergetic development." 

The  apocalyptic  views  of  the  later  Judaism  shaped  the 
pictorial  and  symbolic  form  in  which  early  Christianity  re- 
ceived the  doctrine  as  to  the  future  after  death  of  the  individ- 
ual man.  Jesus  represents  the  Old-Testament  worthies  as  still 
alive, — Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob; — for  their  God  is  not  a 
God  of  the  dead  but  of  the  living.  Those  that  are  accounted 
worthy  to  r)bt;iin  the  resurrection  from  the  dead  are  the  chil- 
dren of  God  and  henceforth  Ix^came  equal  to  the  angels  (Lk. 
XX.  35-38).  }\nt  one's  place  in  this  kingdom  of  the  departed 
is  determined  differently  according  to  the  "deeds  done  in  the 
body."  Tlu;  rii^hteous  l)eggar  Lazaru.s  is  in  ''  Abraham's 
l)osom,"  but  the  unjust  rich  man  is  "  afar  off  "  and  '*in  torments 


510  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

(Lk.  xvi,  19-31).  This  separation  of  the  dead  on  moral 
grounds  is  connected,  in  the  thought  of  the  writers  of  the 
Gospels,  with  the  resurrection  and  the  judgment  of  the  world 
which  terminates  the  present  world-age  ;  and  these  momentous 
events  are  dependent  upon  his  ''  Return  "  (^Parousia),  which 
will  be  sudden  and  unexpected.  Then  all  nations  of  the  earth 
will  be  called  to  judgment ;  sentence  will  be  passed  according 
to  the  standard  of  the  filial  spirit  toward  God  and  of  brotherly 
love  toward  man ;  and  the  decision  in  respect  of  the  future's 
weal  and  woe  will  be  definitely  pronounced.^  All  this  corre- 
sponds quite  completely,  so  far  as  imagery  is  concerned,  with 
the  Rabbinical  notions  of  the  time.  There  are,  however,  certain 
other  utterances  which,  if  they  are  not  obvious  departures  from 
this  point  of  view,  are  difficult  to  reconcile  with  it.  Such  are 
Jesus'  conversation  with  the  Sadducees  (Matt,  xxii,  23-33), 
his  mention  of  "  everlasting  tabernacles  "  into  which  are  re- 
ceived those  who  arrive  at  the  end  before  the  general  resurrec- 
tion (Lk.  xvi,  9),  and  his  promise  to  the  penitent  thief  of  an 
immediate  entrance  into  Paradise  (Lk.  xxiii,  43). 

Whether  it  is  possible  to  obtain  a  consistent  doctrine  of  the 
immortality  of  the  individual  from  such  teachings  as  the 
foregoing,  or  not,  is  in  our  judgment  a  matter  of  compara- 
tively little  moment.  The  large  sweep  of  thought  about  the 
future  of  t!ie  person  who  becomes  attached  to  God,  in  the 
spirit  of  Christ,  comes  into  view  in  connection  with  the 
promise  of  salvation  as  a  new  and  higher  spiritual  life; 
more  emphatically  yet  when  the  future  of  the  race  is  made 
to  be  determined  by  the  progress  and  increasing  triumph  of 
God's  Kingdom.  The  advance  of  this  salvation,  as  it  belongs 
to  the  earthly  life,  carries  with  it  the  sure  promise  of  its  per- 
fection in  the  super-earthly  life  ;  and  death  cannot  put  any  in- 
superable obstacles  in  the  way  of  this  triumphant  progress. 
The  Spirit,  which  has  controlled  Christ  himself,  has  been  in 
him,  he  will  continue  to  send  from  the  Father ;  and  this  same 

1  See  Matt,  xxv,  31-46;  xiii,  39-42;  xix,  28. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  511 

Spirit  in  all  who  are  his  followers,  will  unfold  itself  as  life,  and 
will  secure  the  soul  against  perishing  by  being  cut  off  from  God. 

Such  a  spiritual  development  has  two  sides.  On  the  one 
side,  it  is  the  unfolding  of  the  life  of  faith  in  higher  and  higher 
degrees  of  self-denying  love,  after  the  pattern  of  Christ,  and 
in  purifying  the  soul  from  all  the  imperfections,  weaknesses, 
and  sins,  which  belong  to  its  natural  existence  amidst  its  eartlil}^ 
environment.  On  the  other  side,  it  is  the  securing  of  more  and 
more  of  peace,  joy,  and  blessedness,  by  a  constant  and  increas- 
ingly complete  union  of  the  soul  with  God.^ 

It  is,  however,  in  the  heavenl}^  future  and  not  in  the  earthly 
present  tliat  the  perfection  of  life,  which  is  "  eternal  life,"  the 
"  life  in  God,"  is  to  be  attained  by  true,  faithful,  and  persever- 
ing believers.  There,  "in  the  heavens,"  is  their  great  reward 
(Matt.  V,  12).  What  matters  it,  if  the  gate  be  strait  and 
the  way  narrow  ;  or  if  the  cost  be  a  hand,  a  foot,  or  an  eye ; 
the  life  to  come  is  worth  it  all.  For  it  is  the  true  life,  and 
there  is  the  "  Father's  house  "  (John,  xiv,  2),  tlie  "everlasting 
mansions  "  (Lk.  xvi,  9),  where  Christ  is  and  where  his  disci- 
ples shall  be  glorified  with  him.  In  the  confidence  of  this 
hope  his  followers  were  to  cast  all  their  cares  for  this  life  and 
the  life  to  come  upon  God.  To  secure,  by  being  of  its  Spirit, 
a  place  in  the  Kingdom  of  God  should  be  their  chief  aim ;  and 
all  else  desirable  and  really  good  would  follow.  The  fate 
of  the  sparrow  was  embraced  in  the  Divine  Love ;  how  much 
more  the  lives  of  God's  dear  children.  Witli  them,  as  with 
him,  eternity  shoukl  ever  be  near  at  hand,  in  the  mind's 
eye  and  in  the  affections  of  the  heart.  The  veil  between 
the  two  worlds  is  thin  ;  indeed,  tliere  are  no  two  separate 
worlds,  but  only  one — the  realm  of  the  Father — in  which  the 
life  of  the  man  of  filial  s[)irit  is  spent.  ''The  approach  of 
eternity  aw;ik»;ned  in  Jesus  the  recognition  of  all  that  is  essen- 
tial, i)i  all   that   enilurcs   in   the  sight  of  God."'     This  is  the 

»  Compare  Schinid,  Thcoio^ip  drs  Noucn  Tcstaincntcs,  264/. 
'  Wcnilo,    Ik'giiinings  of  Christianity,   I,   p.  91. 


512  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

attitude  of  mind  and  will  toward  all  life,  present  and  future, 
earthly  and  super-earthly,  which  essentially  accords  with  the 
religion  of  Christ.  "  And  even  though  later  on  the  eschato- 
logical  drama  receded  ever  further  into  the  background,  and 
this  earth  and  the  present  raised  their  claims  on  man  ever 
louder,  yet  eternity  surrounds  us  ever  in  the  garb  of  time, 
and  its  demands  are  the  same,  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for- 
ever. .  .  .  Jesus'  words  condemn  His  own  Church  down  to 
the  present  day." 

Within  the  New-Testament  period,  the  doctrine  of  the  per- 
fecting of  salvation  for  the  individual,  and  the  connected  view 
of  the  immortality  of  the  human  soul,  were  chiefly  developed  in 
the  writings  ascribed  to  the  Apostles  Paul  and  John.  The 
former  had  his  training  in  the  apocalyptic  views  of  the  Jew- 
ish Rabbis.  The  terms  which  he  employs,  and  the  pictures 
which  he  draws,  to  represent  his  conceptions  of  the  future  des- 
tiny of  the  individual  and  of  the  race  are,  therefore,  saturated 
with  the  influences  of  this  training.  Yet  in  his  conception  of 
the  resurrection,  as  made  an  assured  hope  for  the  believer,  he 
far  transcends  the  doctrine  of  later  Judaism.  It  is  his  firm 
confidence  that  the  same  loving  Divine  Will  which  has  be- 
stowed countless  bodily  forms  upon  all  created  things,  from 
fish  to  sun  and  bird  to  star,  will  not  be  defeated  in  his  pur- 
pose by  the  dissolution  which  must  overtake  the  "natural 
body  "  of  those  who  have  put  their  trust  for  life  eternal  in  him 
(I  Cor.  xv).  Nor  is  Paul's  conception  of  the  way  in  which 
this  triumph  over  death  will  actually  be  brought  about,  at 
all  the  gross  material  thing  which  has  so  often  been  attributed 
to  him.  Just  as  the  psyche^  or  natural  soul,  has  had  its  body 
appropriated  to  its  uses  in  its  earthly  existence,  so  when  it 
has  been  *'sown  in  corruption,"  will  there  be  developed  by 
the  divine  power  another  incorruptible  bodily  manifestation 
for  the  spirit  that  has  been  made  truly  alive  by  the  same 
Lord  who  is  the  Giver  of  all  life.  In  this  connection  the  apos- 
tolic vision  is  greatly  enlarged  until  its  horizon  encircles  the 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  513 

entire  race  from  first  to  last.  What  has  already  taken  place 
with  him  who  was  the  Son  of  Man,  and  is  now  the  glorified  Son 
of  God,  shall  take  place  with  all  his  many  brethren.  Death 
shall  have  its  sting  drawn ;  and  from  the  grave  shall  be  taken 
away  its  boast  of  victory.  Thus  this  Apostle  is  led  on  to 
indite  a  hymn  of  triumph  wliich  has  resounded  through  tlie 
centuries  ever  since,  to  the  uplift  and  comfort  of  millions  of 
mourning  and  doubting  souls;  and  which  there  is  every  reason 
to  believe,  in  spite  of  all  criticism  of  the  details  of  its  concep- 
tion, will  go  on  resounding  to  the  end  of  time.  In  yet  another 
passage  (Rom.  viii,  19-23)  this  same  Apostle  sees  all  Nature 
(even  that  ktiVu  which  includes  the  irrational  creation  in  dis- 
tinction from  man),  which  hitherto  has  been  "  subjected  to 
bondage "  by  the  AVill  of  the  Creator,  regenerated,  uplifted, 
and  made  gloriously  to  share  in  the  comprehensive  process  of 
redemption  by  this  same  Will.^ 

In  the  writings  that  bear  the  name  of  John,  the  conception 
of  eternal  life  as  a  supreme  good  which  comes  through  spiritual 
union  with  its  source,  is  dominant.  The  essence  of  this  "  eter- 
nal life  "  is  a  spiritual  likeness  to  Christ ;  as  to  its  form,  this 
has  not  yet  been  made  manifest,  but  will  be  at  Christ's  appearing 
(I  John,  ii,  28 — iii,  3;  iv,  17).  In  that  New-Testament  writ- 
ing which  is  preemiuently  called  the  "Apocalypse,"  there  is  a 
decidedly  backward  movement  upon  a  confusion  of  imagery 
and  lurid  pictorial  representations  such  as  characterize  the 
Jewish  Apocalyptic,  and  from  which  only  a  few  clear  thoughts 
occasionally  emerge.  Yet  the  promises  afforded  in  this  way 
are  full  of  words  of  consolation  and  hope  to  those  who  face 
death  with  the  consciousness  of  a  personal  and  spiritual  agree- 
ment Ixjtween  themselves  and  the  Will  of  Cod  as  made  known 
in  redem{)tion. 

As  has  already  bi'cn  shown,  the  hope  of  immortality  for  the 

1  According  to  Clmrlea  (Ibid.,  pp.  370/.),  there  were  four  stages  in  Paul's 
eschutolopy.  It  is  prolwibly  more  correct  to  say  that  four  different  points 
of  view  may  Ix;  detected,  which  were  never  quite  brought  into  harmony. 

83 


514  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

individual  which  Christianity  held  out  came  to  an  age  prepared 
to  embrace  the  hope.  As  says  Harnack  ^  of  the  religious  dispo- 
sition of  the  Greeks  and  Romans  in  the  first  two  centuries, 
and  of  the  current  Graeco-Roman  philosophy  of  religion : 
"  What  was  sought  above  all,  was  to  enter  into  an  inner  union 
with  the  Deity,  to  be  saved  by  him  and  become  a  partaker  in 
the  possession  and  enjoyment  of  his  life."  The  Platonic,  the 
Stoic,  and  the  Cynic  philosophical  speculation  had  led  the  minds 
of  men  almost  universally  to  the  recognition  of  something 
divine  in  man's  spirit  (^irveOfia  or  voOs^.  But  the  popular  belief 
in  the  bodily  appearance  of  the  gods  among  men  still  prevailed ; 
and  the  need  of  repentance,  purification,  and  an  improved  life 
was  keenly  and  widely  felt.  All  this  was  favorable  to  the 
spread  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  immortality  for  the  indi- 
vidual. But  this  doctrine,  in  order  to  gain  acceptance,  needed 
a  certain  remoulding,  or  at  least  an  explanation  and  develop- 
ment, which  should  the  better  fit  it  to  accord  with  the  concep- 
tions of  the  soul's  nature,  rights,  and  destiny,  then  held  by  the 
current  philosophy  of  religion.  This  belief,  too,  like  all  the 
other  beliefs,  began  to  assume  new  forms  in  adaptation  to  the 
demands  of  the  age.  Under  this  process  of  development,  we 
have  on  the  one  side,  the  extremely  sublimated  ideas  of  Gnos- 
ticism, and  on  the  other,  the  lingerings  of  the  crass  eschato- 
logical  notions  of  the  later  Judaism.  Between  the  two,  al- 
though with  many  differences  of  opinion  as  to  details,  and 
amidst  much  hot  and  wordy  strife  over  obscure  and  even  un- 
intelligible thoughts,  the  belief  of  the  Church  Catholic  suc- 
ceeded in  maintaining  as  an  essential  part  of  its  creed  the 
doctrine  that  Christianity  is  the  religion  which  delivers  man 
from  death  and  leads  him  to  a  blessed  union  with  God.^ 

It  is  not  necessary,  and  it  would  be  profitless,  to  follow  the 
Christian  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  individual  through 
all  its  changes  of  opinion  as  to  How,  and  Where,  and  When, 
and  under  What  Conditions,  and  by  Whom  primarily,  this  pos- 

1  History  of  Dogma,  I,  p.  117.  2  Harnack,  Ibid.,  II,  pp.  169^. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  515 

session  of  life  beyond  death  is  effectuated.  All  the  more  im- 
portant differences  of  view  on  all  these  points  have  thought 
themselves  able  to  appeal  for  support  to  the  teachings  of  Jesus 
and  of  the  Apostles  ;  or  to  some  valid  psychology  of  the  nature 
and  potential  development  of  the  human  soul ;  or  to  some  indis- 
putably true  conception  of  the  Being  of  God,  and  of  his  perma- 
nent and  essential  relations  to  the  histor}^  and  destiny  of  man. 
From  tliis  brief  historical  survey  certain  tentative  conclu- 
sions may  be  drawn  respecting  the  religious  conception  of  im- 
mortality for  the  individual  as  it  appears  for  examination  in 
the  light  of  modern  science  and  philosopliy.  And,  first,  escha- 
tology,  or  the  attempt  at  a  rational  doctrine  of  the  future,  is, 
historically  considered,  a  relatively  late  development.  "  The 
eschatology  of  a  nation,"  says  Charles,^  "is  always  the  last  part 
of  their  religion  to  experience  the  transforming  power  of  new 
ideas  and  new  facts."  For  the  same  reasons  the  very  structure, 
and  the  confirmatory  evidence,  of  any  particular  belief  on  this 
subject  must  always  remain  relatively  imperfect.  But,  second, 
as  the  ethical  and  spiritual  conception  of  the  nature  of  man's 
self-hood  expands  and  deepens  and  becomes  more  surely 
founded,  the  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  individual  Self 
becomes  at  the  same  time  more  rational  and  more  purified  from 
mechanical  and  unethical  elements.  Even  in  the  eschatology 
of  the  New  Testament,  and  certainly  in  much  of  theology  down 
to  the  present  time,  the  existence  of  such  elements  is  un- 
doubted. And,  third,  it  is  above  all  the  conception  of  the 
ethical  being  and  rule  of  God,  as  extending  over  the  whole  race 
and  as  concerned  in  the  historical  process  of  redemption,  jis  the 
Spirit  that  is  in  the  World  of  humanity  to  effect  its  L^plift 
toward  a  moral  union  with  the  Divine,  which  itself  purifies, 
confirms,  and  elevates  the  hope  of  immortality  for  the  indi- 
vidual Self  and  for  humanity. 

1  Critical  History  of  the  Doctrine  of  a  Future  Life,  p.  310. 


CHAPTER   XLV 

THE   IIMMORTALITY  OF   THE  INDIVIDUAL    [COKTINTJED] 

The  belief  in  the  existence  of  the  individual  after  death,  on 
account  of  its  spontaneous  origin  and  nearly  universal  exten- 
sion, may  properly  be  called  "  natural ; "  in  its  highest  reli- 
gious form  this  belief  becomes  the  confident  trust  that  God 
will,  in  his  dealings  with  each  human  being,  maintain  the  per- 
fection of  his  own  ethical  Being.  Our  inquirj^  now  becomes, 
whether  the  doctrine  as  to  the  soul's  nature  and  destiny  which 
the  belief  produces  can  sustain  itself  in  the  light  of  scientific 
knowledge  respecting  man's  constitution  and  his  place  in  Na- 
ture at  large.  Is  the  faith  of  religion  in  the  immortality  of 
the  individual  tenable  in  view  of  other  classes  of  facts  ?  Any 
satisfactory  answer  to  this  question  requires  that  certain  dis- 
tinctions, which  in  the  history  of  the  belief  have  often  been 
confused  or  not  properly  made,  should  now  be  rendered  clear. 
The  clearing-up  of  these  distinctions  is  required  both  by  the 
complexity  of  the  problem  and  by  the  variety  of  the  forms  of 
belief  which  have  attempted  its  solution.  The  grounds  for 
the  distinctions  lie  in  the  nature  of  the  problem  itself,  and  in 
these  same  varied  forms  of  the  belief.  Their  examination, 
therefore,  involves  the  reaffirmation  of  certain  religious  faiths 
and  sentiments,  with  the  psychological  origin  and  development 
in  history  of  which  we  have  by  this  time  become  so  familiar. 

There  is  one  fundamental  assumption  which,  whether  in  a 
somewhat  naive  or  elaborately  scientific  and  philosophical  form, 
underlies  all  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  individual.  This  is 
the  assumption  that  the  so-called  "  soul  "  is  separable  from  the 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  517 

body.  Whatever  the  essential  nature  of  the  principle  of  thought, 
feeling,  and  will,  may  appear  to  be,  and  however  loosel}^  or  in- 
timately related  to  the  bodily  organism,  unless  its  separability 
from  this  organism  may  be  affirmed,  its  existence  after  death  is 
incredible.  For  the  fact  of  death,  and  the  accompanying  more 
or  less  complete  destruction  of  the  body,  is  the  one  indisputa- 
ble and  universal  fact.  But  the  observation  that  the  vital 
processes  not  infrequently  continue  after  all  signs  of  aelf- 
existence  (as  with  the  dying)  have  forever  ceased,  and  even  (as 
in  sleep)  when  such  signs  are  temporarily  suspended,  leads  the 
primitive  mind  to  the  belief  in  two  souls.  Thus  one  of  these 
souls  can  leave  the  body  and  go  elsewhere,  while  the  other  is 
left  to  perish  with  the  body,  or  to  take  its  departure  later. 

The  belief  in  the  separability  of  the  soul  from  the  body  is 
not,  liowever,  in  itself  dependent  upon  any  mature  conception 
as  to  the  nature  of  the  soul's  essence  ;  much  less  is  it  equiva- 
lent to  the  doctrine  of  its  immateriality  or  ability  to  get  along, 
so  to  say,  without  any  bodily  manifestation.  On  the  contrary, 
in  all  the  more  primitive  forms  of  the  belief  in  the  individual's 
immortality,  some  shadowy,  ghost-like  form  of  a  body  is,  as  of 
necessity,  implied.  And  along  that  line  of  the  development 
upon  which  at  the  beginning  the  Christian  faith  seized,  the  doc- 
trine of  a  resurrection — or  coming  again  into  the  possession  of  a 
living  body — was  an  essential  part  of  the  belief  in  an  existence 
after  death.  Even  the  grossest  conception,  liowever,  such  as 
would  make  the  new  body  consist  of  a  reunion  of  the  material 
elements  that  had  composed  the  former  body  at  the  time  of  it-; 
deatli,  must  somehow  })rovide  for  a  temporary  continued  exis- 
tence of  the  soul,  apart  from  its  former  material  organism.  In 
a  word,  either  for  a  sliort  time,  or  for  a  long  time,  or  for  ever, 
the  soul  of  tin.'  individual  man  must  be  capable  of  existence 
apart  from  its  present  ten(Mnent  of  flesh,  if  the  belief  in  im- 
mortality is  to  1x5  niaintainf^d.  The  senses  testify  in  the  most 
uneciuivocal  fashion  to  the  dissolution  of  this^  its  present, 
bodily  manifestation. 


518  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Now  it  is  just  tliis  separability  of  tlie  soul  from  the  bodily 
organism,  to  which  modern  science  offers  such  strenuous,  and 
— as  they  seem  to  many — quite  conclusive  objections.  Unless 
these  objections  can  be  answered,  at  least  so  far  as  to  negative 
their  seemingly  conclusive  character,  the  doctrine  of  the  im- 
mortality of  the  individual  cannot  maintain  itself  in  the  light 
of  the  evidence  to  the  contrary.  To  scientific  evidence  it  is  vain 
to  oppose  the  so-called  "  natural  belief  "  in  an  existence  after 
death.  For  this  belief  itself,  when  regarded  from  the  scientific 
point  of  view,  is  seen  to  be  "  natural  "  in  much  the  same  manner 
as  is  the  belief  in  ghosts  or  in  the  reality  of  the  objects  which 
visit  us  in  dreams.  At  the  best,  this  is  what  seems  true  from 
the  purely  scientific  standpoint :  The  same  activity  of  imagina- 
tion and  thought  which  projects  itself  into  the  future  always,  and 
of  necessit}^  appears  to  itself  as  a  living  thing,  a  conscious  pro- 
cess of  a  here-and-now  existing  soul.  To  try  to  imagine  how 
it  will  be,  not  to  be  at  all,  is  to  try  something  quite  foreign  to 
the  powers  of  the  human  mind ;  equally  so,  to  ask  the  mind 
to  express  in  thoughts  what  it  will  be  to  have  no  thoughts  at 
all.  Therefore,  a  mental  picture  of  the  non-existence  of  the 
Self,  drawn  true  to  life — or  rather,  to  the  absence  of  all  life — 
by  the  Self's  own  constructive  skill  is  impossible.  No  positive 
conception  can  be  gained  of  that  which  negates  all  conception. 
Such  an  inability  is,  however,  in  no  respect  a  guaranty,  or  even 
an  argument  to  establish  the  probability,  of  the  soul's  everlast- 
ing life.  Every  night  that  is  spent,  in  part,  in  dreamless  sleep, 
is  an  experience  which  includes  the  reality  of  that  of  which, 
from  its  \Qvy  nature,  no  positive  conception  can  possibly  be 
formed.  Imagination  and  intellect  close  over  the  gap  in  the 
life  of  the  Self  by  bringing  together  the  conscious  states  on 
either  side.  Wliat  it  was,  if  anything,  for  us  meanwhile  to  be 
a  soul,  we  can  no  easier  tell  ourselves  then  what  it  would  have 
been  to  cease  forever  to  be ;  if  we  had  indeed  never  awakened 
from  that  dreamless  sleep.  For  so  little,  then,  until  the  Self 
has  attained  the  consciousness  of  its  moral  worth  and  its  ideal 


IMMORTALITY   OF   THE   INDIVIDUAL  519 

value  in  a  world  where  Ethical  Spirit  is  supreme,  does  the  so- 
called  natural  belief  in  the  soul's  existence  after  death  count 
as  a  valid  argument  for  the  immortality  of  the  individual. 

The  brief  liistorical  survey  of  the  last  Chapter  was  sufficient 
to  show  that  the  rational  grounds  on  which  the  attempts  of 
reflection  to  establisli  the  immortality  of  the  individual  have 
relied,  have  had  a  two-fold  character.  These  attempts  them- 
selves, however,  have  by  no  means  always  recognized  tliis  fact. 
Indeed,  in  Christian  theology,  from  the  time  when  it  came 
under  the  dominating  influence  of  Greek  philosophy  onward, 
both  these  lines  of  evidence  have  been  employed  to  establish 
the  rationality  of  the  hope  of  immortal  life.  Of  these  two, 
the  one  builds  upon  a  certain  view  of  the  soul  as  an  entity; 
the  other  turns  the  rather  in  faith  toward  God  as  pledged  to 
be  the  soul's  Redeemer.  The  former  culminates  in  a  demon- 
stration of  the  so-called  natural  immortality,  or  inherent  inde- 
structibility, of  tlie  principle  of  the  individual's  self-conscious 
and  personal  life.  It  claims  to  know  the  human  soul  to  be  of 
such  a  nature,  that  we  may  safely  deduce  from  its  very  con- 
ception a  non  posse  mori.  The  other  line  of  argument,  if  taken 
by  itself,  reaches  its  supreme  expression  in  the  confidence  that 
a  finite  spirit,  which  has  entered  b}^  a  voluntary  act  into  a 
moral  and  spiritual  union  with  the  Infinite  and  perfect  Ethical 
Spirit,  has  in  this  very  fact  a  pledge  for  its  continued  existence 
and  development.  It  places  in  this  experience  of  faith  and 
life  in  God,  the  valid  reasons  for  the  firm  conviction  of  a  posse 
non  mori.  Such  a  Self  has  acquired  the  ability  to  triumph  over 
death  ;   it  has  received  the  divine  gift  of  innnortal  life. 

The  feeling  of  the  difficulties  whicli  arise  from  the  very 
nature  of  man's  two-fold  being  and  from  the  more  obvious 
facts  wlii(;h  show  tlio  dependiMico  of  his  highest  spiritual  ex- 
periences upon  the  condition  uf  the  bodily  organism  is  no 
modern  affair.  Tlio  materialistic  view  of  the  probltMu  is  as 
old  lus  human  n'tle(;tive  thinking.  But  the  more  definite, 
scientific    knowledge    on    which  similar   dillicukiea    are    now 


520  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

supported  is  comparatively  modern.  Its  effects  upon  the  re- 
ligious beliefs  and  hopes  that  are  connected  with  the  tenet  of 
immortality  are  already  only  too  obvious.  The  estimate  of 
the  moral  value  of  the  individual  has,  indeed,  been  on  the 
whole  much  enhanced.  In  the  light  of  modern  science  man's 
life  seems  more  than  ever  worth  the  saving  and  perpetual  im- 
proving. But  the  study  of  his  mental  activities  and  develop- 
ment from  the  biological,  physiological  and  psycho-physical 
points  of  view  jDlaces  a  tremendous  weight  of  emphasis  upon 
the  absolute  and  complete  dependence  of  these  activities,  and 
of  this  development,  on  the  functions  and  the  evolution  of  the 
material  organism.  One  may  easily  refuse  to  go  to  the  absurd 
length  of  regarding  the  life  of  self-consciousness,  recognitive 
memory,  rational  tliinking,  and  self-determination  in  view  of 
a  possible  realizing  of  sesthetical  and  ethical  ideals,  as  a  mere 
series  of  "  ^p^-phenomena,"  as  the  effluence  of  brain  functions. 
One  may  indignantly  reject  the  position  of  out-and-out  mater- 
ialism ;  but  it  is  still  a  short  and  easy  step  over  a  seductive 
path  from  the  phenomena  to  the  conclusion  that  the  soul's 
dependence  upon  the  bodily  life,  really  is,  as  it  seems  to  these 
sciences,  final  and  absolute. 

The  candid  searcher  for  the  truth  of  the  religious  doctrine 
of  the  immortality  of  the  individual  must,  therefore,  face  again 
the  problem  of  the  separability  of  the  soul  from  the  body.  This 
problem  undoubtedly  appears  more  complex  and  tremendous 
than  ever  before,  in  the  light  of  modern  scientific  discoveries. 
The  objections  offered  by  these  discoveries  may  be  conveniently 
summarized  under  the  six  following  heads. ^  Of  these  lines  of 
evidence,  the  first  is  derived  from  studies  in  general  biology, 
and  considers  man's  place  in  the  biological  series.  This  ob- 
jection looks  upon  all  psychical  phenomena,   upon  life  from 

1  It  will  not,  perhaps,  be  out  of  place  in  this  connection  to  say  that  the 
following  necessarily  brief  summary  expresses  the  conclusions  of  many 
years  of  careful  and  detailed  study  of  the  subject,  "Mind  and  Body,"  and 
the  relations  actually  existing  between  the  two. 


IMMORTALITY   OF  THE   INDIVIDUAL  521 

the  psychological  point  of  view,  as  dependently  related  to  the 
life  which  the  biologist  regards  simply  as  the  phenomena  of 
natural  organic  bodies.  This  physical  life  has  its  explana- 
tion in  the  character  of  tlie  chemical  processes  which  perpet- 
ually construct  these  bodies :  "  The  miracle  of  life,"  says 
Haeckel/  "  is  essentially  nothing  else  but  a  change  in  the  mate- 
rial of  the  living  substance,  or  metabolism  of  the  plasma." 
These  processes,  although  their  products  vary  enormously  in 
complexity,  all  the  way  from  a  single  living  cell  which,  how- 
ever, in  spite  of  its  relative  simplicity  somehow  knows  the 
way  to  go  through  the  most  astonishing  performances,  up  to 
the  incredibly  gifted  and  ingenious  nervous  structure  of  man, — 
composed  of  countless  millions  of  such  highly  differentiated 
elements, — are  essentially  the  same.  The  evolution  of  bio- 
logical life  is  one  vast  continuous  process.  And  the  human 
animal,  although  standing  at  the  head  of  the  process,  is  only 
one  member  in  the  biological  series  ;  man  is  a  development, 
embodying  all  that  is  behind  him  in  time,  and  below  him  in 
the  scale  of  the  entire  series.  Eveiywhere  in  this  series,  how- 
ever, biological  death  consists  in  the  ceasing  of  that  balance  of 
interplay,  in  whose  continuance  biological  life  consists,  between 
the  building-up  and  the  falling-apart  of  the  "  protoplasmic 
molecules."  Everywhere,  biological  death  is  at  once  followed 
by  the  cessation  of  all  signs  of  psychical  life.  The  amoeba 
seems  to  have  a  "  will  of  its  own  " ;  the  white  blood-corpuscle 
behaves  as  though  moved  by  some  sort  of  a  purposeful,  con- 
scious soul.  But  dissolve  the  atomic  structure  of  the  aina'ba, 
desiccate  the  blood-corpuscle,  and  thus  stop  once  for  all  the 
*'  metabolism  c)f  the  plasma,"  and  this  purposeful,  soul-like  be- 
havior of  the  living  thing  never  returns.  With  the  cessation 
of  tlie  chemical  processes  goes  the  cessation  of  all  signs  of 
psychical  life.  In  man's  case,  although  he  staniLs  at  the  head 
of  countless  teons  of  continuous  or  violently  interrupted  evo- 
lution, the   conditions  of  biological   life  and  development  are 

»  Daa  Lebenawunder,  p.   1 1 1/. 


522  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

known  to  be  the  same ;  the  dependence  of  his  psychical  life 
and  development  upon  the  fulfilment  of  organic  conditions 
appears  to  be  equally  complete. 

What  conclusion,  then,  in  man's  behalf  does  general  biology 
warrant  other  than  the  conclusion  to  which  it  is  forced  by  its 
experience  with  the  whole  of  the  series  of  natural  living  bod- 
ies ?  Nowhere  does  the  psychical,  however  inexplicable  in 
terms  of  the  physical,  its  origin,  development,  and  essential 
characteristics  may  be,  seem  to  escape  this  dependence  upon 
the  integrity  of  its  supporting  organism.  We  may  not  indeed 
affirm  that  immortality  for  the  individual  cannot  develop  in 
that  soil  of  the  organic,  where  a  definite  race  between  the  up- 
building and  down-pulling  forces  must  always  terminate  in 
favor  of  the  latter.  But  is  not  the  science  of  life  compelled  to 
assert  that  all  its  experience  of  the  facts  forbids  its  holding 
out  any  promise  to  the  hope  that  it  will  be  so  ? 

When  attention  is  directed  more  particularly  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  individual  man,  the  second  of  the  objections  to 
belief  in  the  separability  of  the  soul  from  the  bodily  organism 
at  once  becomes  obvious.  This  objection  arises  from  the  ap- 
parently complete  parallelism  between  the  psychical  and  the 
organic  processes  of  evolution.  The  beginnings  of  the  life  of 
the  human  individual,  like  those  of  the  individual  member  of 
all  the  higher  animal  species,  coexist  with  the  fusion  of  a  cell 
from  the  male  (a  spei-matozoon)  with  a  cell  from  the  female  (an 
ovuni).  The  spermatovum^  which  originates  from  this  fusion 
of  the  two  cells,  straightway  proceeds  upon  its  business  of 
building  out  of  the  pabulum  with  which  it  is  supplied — whether 
from  the  maternal  organism  or  after  it  has  left  this  organism — 
a  complicated  structure  of  the  species  from  which  it  was  itself 
derived.  Not  only  does  this  cell,  with  its  elements  derived 
from  the  two  parents,  somehow  serve  as  the  bearer  of  all  the 
characteristics  common  to  the  species  ;  but  it  also  transmits 
those  more  particular  traits  of  a  physical  and  organic  or  tem- 
peramental sort  which  have  come  down  from  countless  gener- 


LVIMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  523 

ations  of  its  own  ancestors;  even  minute  idiosyncrasies  of  bodily 
and  mental  sort  are  carried  over  in  this  same  compound  of 
living  cells.  At  every  step  in  the  evolution  of  this  physical 
germ,  the  same  relation  between  it  and  the  psychical  develop- 
ment seems  to  be  illustrated.  As  the  embryo  develops  in  the 
mother's  womb,  signs  that  the  lower  and  more  plant-like  forms 
of  a  quasi-psychical  functioning  have  already  begun,  are  by  no 
means  wanting.  At  birth  the  development  of  the  nervous  sys- 
tem has  proceeded  just  far  enough  to  fit  it  for  the  prompt  and 
effective  responses  to  those  attacks  from  the  sensory  stimuli  of 
its  new  and  strange  physical  environment,  in  which  the  founda- 
tions of  a  psychical  development  must  be  laid.  But  the  asso- 
ciation-elements in  the  brain  are  not  as  yet  ready  for  use  ;  and 
even  the  fibers  in  the  voluntary  tracts  of  the  higher  part  of 
the  spinal  cord  have  not  yet  been  myelinated ; — so  determined 
is  nature  to  have  the  functions  and  manifestations  of  the  so- 
called  soul  develop  only  pari  passu^  as  it  were,  with,  if  not  in 
absolute  dependence  upon,  the  evolution  of  the  physical  organ- 
ism. All  the  way  through  life,  the  semblance  of  at  least  this 
rough  form  of  a  parallel  evolution  is  maintained.  In  connec- 
tion with  the  increasing  use  of  the  higher  cerebral  centers,  the 
higher  functions  of  thouglit  and  of  feeling  display  themselves. 
jNIemory — or  rather  a  complex  system  of  more  or  less  definitively 
allied  and  interrelated  memories — develops  in  dependence 
upon  the  creation  and  preservation,  intact,  of  association-tracts 
in  the  brain.  With  the  maturing  vigor  and  continued  sound- 
ness of  the  nervous  system,  and  its  education  in  the  prompt 
and  unimpeded  performance  of  its  functions,  the  period  of 
greatest  mental  vigor  is  reached ;  and  witli  the  decaying 
strength  and  impaired  character  of  these  functions,  in  wliich 
old  age  compels  the  liumau  individual  to  share  the  law  of  all 
life,  the  psychical  weaknesses  peculiar  to  this  period  begin 
more  abundantly  to  appear. 

What  is  illustrated  ])y  the  details  of  the  pliysical  and  psychi- 
cal evolution  of  each   imlividual  man  is  also  impressively  en- 


524  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

forced  by  a  study  of  the  parallelism  between  the  two,  in  the 
entire  human  species ;  it  is  even  yet  more  impressively  illus- 
trated by  a  comparative  study  of  all  the  animal  kingdom. 
In  this  way  more  or  less  successful  attempts  have  been  made 
to  scale  the  intellectual  capacities  of  different  species  of  ani- 
mals and  different  races  of  men,  according  to  the  size  of  the 
brain,  and  the  complexity  of  the  convolutions  of  its  cortex. 
Nor  have  such  attempts  been  willing  to  stop  short  of  estimating 
the  place  in  the  mental  scale  of  the  two  sexes,  or  of  different 
individuals  from  either  sex,  by  weighing  and  observing  the  dif- 
ferences in  this  rind  of  gray  matter,  the  more  abundant  posses- 
sion of  which  is  the  crowning  physical  glory  of  the  human 
species. 

This  general  and  relatively  rough  paralleling  of  the  charac- 
teristics and  evolution  of  body  and  mind  in  man,  for  purposes  of 
emphasizing  the  dependence  of  the  latter  upon  the  former,  has 
now  become  much  more  definite  and  scientific  througli  the 
recent  discoveiies  in  the  so-called  localization  of  cerebral  func- 
tion. Since  the  year  1870,  more  especially,  physiological 
science  has  been  somewhat  steadily  winning  its  way  in  this 
direction.  What  areas  of  the  brain-cortex  are  somehow  es- 
pecially concerned  in  the  motor  functions  of  the  different 
principal  parts  of  the  body,  and — more  surprising  and  impor- 
tant still — in  psychical  or  intelligent  seeing  and  hearing,  is  now 
so  well  known  as  to  serve  the  purposes  of  the  surgeon  in  the 
locating  and  relief  of  various  psychical  troubles  that  originate 
in  diseased  conditions  of  the  brain.  And  there  are  just  now 
indications  which  cannot  be  wholly  discredited,  that  a  number 
of  those  beliefs  of  the  early  explorers  in  this  field — like  Gall  and 
Spurzheim, — which  have  hitherto  been  discarded  as  altogether 
fanciful,  are  by  no  means  devoid  of  foundation  in  fact.  Thus 
does  cerebral  physiology  seem  to  be  pinning  ever  more  tightly 
to  the  cerebral  areas  the  different  principal  forms  of  conscious 
psychical  functioning. 

In  close  sequence  upon  the  third  class  of  objections  to  the 


IMMORTALITY  OF   i  HE  INDIVIDUAL  525 

separability  of  the  soul  of  the  individual  from  the  bodily  or- 
ganism follows  another.  This  fourth  class  comes  from  observing 
the  mental  effects  of  functional  bodily  disturbances.  It  is  the 
fundamental  character  of  this  dependence  of  the  conscious  ex- 
periences of  the  soul  upon  the  healthy  or  the  abnormal 
discharge  of  the  organic  functions  which  gives  all  their  signifi- 
cance to  such  phrases  as  "  feeling  well  "  or  "  feeling  ill."  In- 
deed, in  not  a  few  diseases  the  psychical  symptoms  are  quite 
as  specific  as  are  the  physical ;  the  obvious  results  in  conscious- 
ness serve  to  characterize  their  causes  in  the  concealed  distur- 
bances of  the  bodily  system.  Especially  noteworthy  is  the 
dependence  of  the  train  of  associated  ideas  for  the  rapidity  and 
trustworthiness  of  its  flow,  for  its  coloring,  and  indeed  for  its 
veiy  continuance,  upon  the  quantity  and  the  character  of  the 
blood-supply  furnished  to  the  brain.  Thought  and  memory 
stumble,  when  this  supply  is  interrupted  or  is  loaded  witli  the 
decomposition  products  of  diseased  or  exhausted  tissues.  All 
psychical  phenomena  cease  entirely  when  pressure  on  the 
arteries  cuts  off  this  supply  altogether.  Different  drugs,  when 
introduced  into  the  circulation  either  throu^^h  tlie  lun^rs  or  the 
digestive  tracts,  or  directly  by  injection  into  the  veins,  produce 
specific  forms  of  hallucination  and  other  kinds  of  psychical  dis- 
turbances. There  is  little  need,  however,  to  multiply  illustra- 
tions of  the  dependence  of  mind  upon  the  healthy  discharge  of 
the  organic  functions ;  every  man's  daily  life  is  full  of  such 
illustrative  experiences. 

When,  instead  of  temporary  functional  disturbances,  with 
their  inevitable  accompaniment  of  disturbed  conditions  of  the 
psychical  life,  we  have  to  consider  the  mental  effects  of  serious 
organic  lesions  or  otlier  injuries,  the  evidence  appeai-s  yet  more 
conclusive  against  tlio  separability  of  the  soul  from  the  bodily 
organism.  Especially  impressive  is  this  evidence  in  all  cases 
of  organic  diseases  of  tlio  bniin.  If  wounding,  or  a  tumor,  or 
an  abscess,  attacks  and  dt'stroys  certain  cei*ebral  areas,  then 
aphasia  is  the  result ;  and  the  character  of  the  aphasia  will  de- 


526  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

pend  upon  the  seat  and  the  extent  of  the  disease.  In  one  case, 
the  articulate  word-image  is  lost ;  in  another,  the  written  word- 
image  ;  in  still  a  third,  the  unfortunate  patient  can  recognize, 
select,  and  will  the  proper  sound  or  visual  sign  for  the  idea, 
but  he  has  lost  command  of  the  center  of  voluntary  controL 
As  that  degeneracy  of  the  tissues  which  is  the  misfortune  of 
old  age  invades  the  cerebral  areas,  memory  of  the  higher  and 
more  intelligent  sort  begins  to  fail.  And  if  that  progressive 
paralysis  of  the  brain-centers  known  as  general  paresis  attacks 
our  friend,  we  stand  by  helpless  while  we  see  the  divine  and 
god-like  faculties  of  the  spirit  fade  away,  one  by  one,  and  mark 
the  inevitable  end,  which  will  be  the  reduction  of  them  all 
to  the  lowest  terms  of  the  merest  animal  or  plant-like  exis- 
tence. 

In  concluding  this  list  of  objections  to  the  separability  of  the 
soul  from  the  bodily  organism,  the  admissions  of  modern  psy- 
chology may  be  summoned  to  support  the  lines  of  evidence  ad- 
duced by  modern  biology  and  physiology.  These  admissions 
emphasize  the  dependence  of  even  the  higher  forms  of  the  men- 
tal life  upon  that  sensory-motor  basis  of  experience,  which,  in 
turn,  we  know  to  be  most  intimatel}^  and  obviously  dependent 
upon  the  functions  of  the  nervous  system.  Thus  the  highest 
spirituality  in  man  is  made  to  appear  as  mediated  only  by  the 
sensuous  and  the  physical.  For  "  we  seem  warranted  in  insist- 
ing that  the  following  five  great  groups  of  correlations  between 
body  and  mind  are  always  maintained  during  the  mind's  con- 
scious existence."  ^  (1)  "  The  quality  and  intensity  of  the 
sense-element  in  our  experience  is  correlated  with  the  condition 
of  the  nervous  system  as  acted  on  by  its  appropriate  stimuli." 
(2)  "  The  combination,  whether  simultaneous  or  successive,  of 
our  conscious  experiences  is  correlated  with  the  combination 
of  the  impressions  made,  from  whatever  source,  upon  the  ner- 
vous organism."     (3)    "  Those  phenomena  of  consciousness 

1  Quoted — as  are  the  succeding  statements  upon  this  point — from  the 
author's  Elements  of  Physiological  Psychology,  p.  579/. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  527 

which  we  designate  as  '  memory '  and  '  recollection,'  as  well  as 
the  play  of  the  reproduced  images  in  general,  are  correlated 
with  the  molecular  constitution  and  tendencies,  and  with  the 
so-called  'dynamic  associations '  of  the  elements  of  the  nervous 
system."  (4)  "  The  course  of  thought,  and  all  the  higher 
forms  of  self-conscious  experience  are  correlated  with  the  con- 
dition of  the  cerebral  centers."  (5)  "The  statical  condition 
of  the  body  (by  which  we  mean  all  those  inherited  peculiarities 
of  the  organism,  the  sexual  and  tribal  bodily  characteristics, 
the  corporal  constitution  as  dependent  upon  age,  which  change 
only  slowly  and  within  narrow  limits,  or  do  not  change  per- 
ceptibly at  all)  and  the  general  tone  or  coloring  of  conscious 
experience,  are  correlated." 

What  wonder,  then,  that  those  who  are  either  ignorant  or 
deliberately  neglectful  of  other  considerations,  regard  the  ar- 
guments against  the  immortality  of  the  individual  as  quite  con- 
clusive ?  For,  whatever  might  be  said  to  encourage  the  hope 
of  life  after  death,  this  hope  seems  already  cut  up  at  the  very 
roots,  as  it  were,  by  the  proof  of  the  inseparability  of  the  sup- 
posedly immortal,  from  the  confessedly  mortal,  nature  of  man. 
But  the  complex  problem  offered  by  this  religious  doctrine  is 
not  so  easily  and  quickly  solved,  even  when  the  arguments 
are  kept  within  this  their  lowest  and  most  manageable  stage. 
For  no  one  of  these  six  groups  of  considerations  is  conclu- 
sive ;  neither  is  a  fatal  argument  against  the  doctrine  to  be 
made  complete  by  all  of  them  combined.  On  the  contrary, 
each  one  of  these  groups  of  phenomena  is  not  only  equivocal 
and  inconclusive,  even  when  taken  at  its  higliest  valuation, 
but  is  also  inclusive  of  phenomena  whose  interpretiition  en- 
courages, if  it  does  not  demand,  another  explanation.'     This 

1  It  is  doubtless  partly  on  this  account,  as  well  as  partly  on  account  of  a 
certain  tenderness  toward  so  dear  a  hoj^c  that,  as  Professor  James  has  said 
CHuman  Immortality,  note  2,  p.  49),  while  thore  are  plenty  of  paasajjcs 
in  modern  writers  which  maintain  that  mind  is  coterminous  with  brain- 
function,  there  is  hardly  one  in  which  the  author  explicitly  denies  the  poaai- 
bility  of  immortality. 


528  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

revei'se  aspect  makes  it  apparent  that,  in  the  unity  of  man's 
total  experience,  the  functioning  and  even  the  upbuilding  of 
the  structure  of  the  bodily  organism  is  dependent  upon  the 
activities  and  the  development  of  the  self-conscious,  and  ra- 
tional Self. 

Evidence  in  support  of  a  certain  primacy  and  relative  inde- 
pendence of  the  psychical  life  may  be  derived  from  man's  rela- 
tion to  the  other  members  of  the  biological  series.  In  the  case 
of  all  the  countless  species  which  compose  this  series,  the  value 
of  the  psychical  and  the  conscious  activities,  for  their  struc- 
tural development  and  specific  variation,  is  becoming  more  ap- 
parent to  students  of  biology.  From  the  lowest  members  up- 
ward, conscious  strivings  that  appear  like  anticipations  of  future 
realizations,  have  served  as  stimuli  to  induce  important  changes 
in  the  constitution  and  functioning  of  the  organism.  Every- 
where the  psychical  appears  as  a  force,  which  modifies  and 
shapes  to  higher  and  higher  uses  the  physical  and  the  struc- 
tural. So  that  from  a  no  less  realistic — however  less  scien- 
tifically productive — point  of  view,  the  entire  development 
of  animal  life  upon  the  globe  may  be  treated,  in  respect  of  its 
sources  and  causes,  from  the  point  of  view  of  comparative  psy- 
chology. From  this  point  of  view,  biology  becomes  a  history 
of  the  way  in  which  the  obscure  feelings  of  irritation,  unrest 
need,  desire,  or  the  more  definite  forms  of  the  appetites  of  food, 
drink,  and  sex,  and  tlie  emotions  of  pride,  love,  hate,  and  do- 
mestic affection,  have  driven  onward  toward  their  goal  the 
more  and  more  organically  complex  evolutions  of  the  "  proto- 
plasmic molecules."  Thus  considered,  even  "  the  metabolism 
of  the  plasma  "  is  a  psychical  function.  When  man  is  reached, 
and  taking  into  account  the  whole  history  of  his  past  evolution 
as  a  species,  it  becomes  eminently  impracticable  to  regard  his 
spiritual  development  as  standing  only  in  the  relation  of  effect 
to  cause,  toward  his  organic  and  specific  supremacy.  With  the 
first  beginnings  of  Selfhood — whenever  or  however  these  begm- 
nings  may  have  come  about — the  psychical  life  commences  in 


IMMORTALITY   OF   THE   INDIVIDUAL  529 

no  unimportant  way  to  dominate  the  physical.  From  this  time 
onward,  it  is  quite  as  true  to  the  facts  to  say  that  man  has  raised 
himself  above  all  the  other  members  of  the  biological  series,  as 
to  say  that  he  has  heeii  liaised  by  the  forces  of  organic  evolution 
to  the  headship  of  this  series. 

When  we  turn  to  consider  the  evidence  from  the  parallel  de- 
velopments of  body  and  of  mind,  we  find  abundant  proof  that 
the  relation  of  dependence  is  not  a  one-sided  relation.  In  fact, 
the  most  impressive  thing,  however  mysterious,  about  the  evo- 
lution of  the  human  nervous  organism  is  just  this  discovery 
that  the  building  of  the  structure  anticipates  the  psychical  uses 
of  that  structure ;  and  at  the  same  time  waits  for  these  uses 
for  its  own  maturing.  It  is  under  tlie  excitement  of  the  soul 
by  the  external  sense-stimuli  and  from  its  own  blind  strivings 
and  cravings,  that  the  nervous  organs  acquire  their  complete 
ability  to  perform  their  higher  functions.  Thus  it  is  a  by  no 
means  inapt  figure  of  speech  that  enables  us  to  say  :  The  soul 
demands  of  the  body  those  forms  of  service  which  the  vital 
energies,  stimulated  by  the  demand,  prepare  the  body  to 
perform. 

It  is  also  possible  to  regard  the  phenomena  which  have  led 
to  the  more  definite  localization  of  cerebral  function  from  a 
point  of  view  more  favorable  to  the  separability  of  the  soul 
from  the  body.  For  within  certiiin  limits,  not  easy  definitely 
to  fix,  when  the  appropriate  cerebral  areas  are  so  injured,  de- 
stroyed, or  otherwise  hindered,  that  they  can  no  longer  func- 
tion in  tlie  customary  way,  other  closely  contiguous  areas  on 
the  same  hr'misphere,  or  corresponding  areas  on  the  opposite 
hemisphere,  can  \yQ  substituted  in  their  place.  But  in  order  to 
effect  this  substitution  the  enlistment  of  the  soul's  strivings 
and  efforts  is  of  the  fii-st  importmco.  The  whole  theory  of 
training,  and  the  perfection  and  ease  in  the  performance  of 
function  whicli  are  acquired  through  practice,  wlien  regarded 
from  tills  psychological  point  of  view,  emphiusizcs  the  depen- 
dence of  the  histological  structui'e  and  the  functioning  of  the 

34 


530  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

cerebral  centers  upon  psychical  preconditions.  The  most 
patent  thing  about  this  acquisition  of  skill  by  striving  and  try- 
ing is  this :  Changes  in  different  localities  of  the  nervous 
mechanism,  and  in  the  association-tracts  connecting  these  locali- 
ties, are  actually  dependent  upon  causes  that  are  conscious  and 
voluntary.^ 

If  now  attention  be  given  to  the  relations  actually  existing 
between  organic  disturbances  of  function  and  the  accompany- 
ing psychical  excitements  and  disturbances,  these  relations,  too, 
no  longer  appear  as  a  one-dimensioned  affair.  Indeed,  here  the 
case  can  be  even  more  favorably  made  out  for  the  advocate  of 
the  primacy  and  supremacy  of  the  psychical  over  the  physical, 
of  the  mind  over  the  body.  Even  the  flow  of  the  gastric  juice 
in  the  stomach  seems  to  be  a  psychically  initiated  rather  than 
a  purely  mechanical  affair.  The  pleasures  of  taste,  experienced 
or  anticipated,  are  the  potent  cause  of  this  form  of  organic 
functioning  rather  than  the  action  of  the  food-substance  in  the 
organ  and  upon  its  walls.  "  The  nutrition  of  the  tissues,  the 
circulation  of  the  blood,  the  secretion  of  different  kinds  of 
fluids,  the  healthy  or  diseased  nature  of  the  vital  processes, 
are  dependent  upon  the  states  of  the  mind.  If  abnormal  diges- 
tion produces  melancholy,  it  is  equally  true  that  melancholy 
causes  bad  digestion."  Care,  chagrin,  and  ennui  poison  the 
arterial  blood.  The  sthenic  and  asthenic  effect  of  various 
emotions  upon  the  organic  functions  is  quite  as  obvious  and 
undoubted  as  is  the  effect  of  the  functional  disturbances  of 
the  organs  in  producing  the  various  emotions  themselves.  In 
the  curing  or  relief  of  acute  mania  or  of  the  melancholy  of  grief, 
the  diverting  of  interest  and  the  enlisting  of  will  are  of  primary 
importance.  Indeed,  the  attitude  of  will  is  of  prime  importance 
for  the  recovery  from  disease  generally.  All  the  explanatory 
theories  of  the  strange  phenomena  of  hypnosis  depend  chiefly, 

^  In  proof  of  this  contention  see  "A  Suggestive  Case  of  Nerve-Anastomo- 
sis" as  discussed  by  the  author,  in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly,  for  August, 
1895. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  531 

or  largely,  upon  the  principle  of  "  suggestion."  But  suggestion 
is  a  psychological  principle;  it  is  a  way  of  inducing  func- 
tional results  in  the  organism  through  the  introduction  of  ideas 
and  the  stirring  of  desire  and  effort  within  the  mind.  So  far  as 
"  suggestive  tlierapeutics  "  is  concerned,  this  is  only  another 
name  for  what  is  more  vulgarly  called,  and  dangerously  em- 
ployed, under  the  term  "  mental  healing." 

Not  even  in  the  most  desperate,  incurable,  and  fatal  cases 
of  organic  disease  is  the  complete  and  final  dependence  of  the 
soul  upon  the  body  indisputably  evinced.  Indeed,  the  power 
of  the  cheerful  mind,  the  resolved  and  indomitable  will,  the 
trustful  and  joyful  religious  spirit,  over  tlie  nutrition  and  re- 
pair of  abnormal  changes  and  lesions  in  the  bodily  organs,  is 
not  altogether  easy  to  reduce  within  clearly  assignable  limits. 
When  the  bewitched  Redskin  wraps  himself  in  his  blanket, 
turns  his  face  to  the  wall,  and  dies  to  order  as  he  has  been  told 
tliat  he  will  do ;  he  illustrates  to  the  extreme  the  same  un- 
doubted principle  to  which  many  cases  of  recovery  from  severe 
illnesses  must  be  referred.  If  "suggestion"  can  elicit  brands, 
stigmata,  and  other  more  deeply-seated  observable  organic  and 
permanent  responses,  it  can  fairly  be  said  also  to  be  able  to 
stimulate  and  effectuate  organic  repairs  in  tlie  highly  sensitive 
and  responsive  tissues  of  the  brain.  But  it  is  from  these 
tissues  outward  that  the  peripheral  organs  have  their  nutrition 
and  upbuilding  so  largely  controlled.  On  the  one  extreme, 
stiind  the  dangerous  errors  of  fanaticism  ;  on  the  other,  lie 
the  risks  and  misses  of  opportunity  to  which  the  over-estimate 
of  tlie  physical  and  the  depreciation  of  the  spiritual  is  always 
subject.  Somewhere  between  lies  the  truth  ;  but  it  is  a  truth 
whicli  reaflirnis  our  confidence  in  a  certain  iniporUmt  depen- 
dence of  the  body  upon  the  suul.  Even  in  the  ciise  of  that  soul- 
destroying  disease,  the  progressive  paralysis  of  the  insane, 
there  have  been  instiinces,  where  the  psychical  life  has  seemed 
to  rcap[)ear  in  a  manner  approa(diing  its  natunil  vigor,  as 
though  it  had  by  (jno  supreme  effort  broken  loose  from  the 


532  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

barriers  which  had  been  closing  round  it  through  the  decadence 
of  the  brain. ^ 

When  at  the  close  of  this  re-survey  of  facts  from  the  domi- 
nant psychical  point  of  view,  we  come  to  consider  the  relations 
in  v/hich  its  higher  activities  stand  to  the  lower,  and  through 
them  to  the  bodily  organism,  the  argument  is  strengthened  foi* 
the  possibility  of  an  existence  for  the  soul  after  the  death  of 
the  body.  However  necessary  the  sensational  and  motor  basis 
may  be  for  the  development  and  bodily  manifestation  of  these 
higher  activities,  they  themselves  distinctly  transcend  the 
limits  of  this  basis.  Changes  in  the  intensity,  the  time-rate, 
the  combinations,  the  locality,  of  the  organic  excitements  are 
correlated  with  changes  in  the  intensity,  the  time-rate,  the 
combinations,  and  the  qualities,  of  our  sensory-motor  experi- 
ences. In  these  and  closely  allied  respects  the  relation  be- 
tween soul  and  body  can  be  thought  of,  in  accordance  with  the 
facts  of  experience,  as  a  relation  of  reciprocal  dependence. 
Body  influences  mind,  and  mind  influences  body  ; — this  is  the 
popular,  the  common-sense  way  of  expressing  the  two  sides, 
or  two  directions,  of  this  relation.  And  psycho-physical  science 
cannot  improve  upon  the  expression,  cannot  essentially  alter  its 
accepted  meaning  as  stated  to  explain  the  universal  experience. 
Science  can  only  investigate  more  minutely,  and  formulate 
more  accurately,  what  these  reciprocal  influences,  these  actions 
and  reactions,  actually  are  experienced  to  be.^  But  above  the 
sphere  of  these  investigations,  rises  a  development  of  the  soul's 
self-conscious  and  self-determining  life,  as  related  to  certain 
ethical  and  sesthetical  ideals,  to  which  all  language  derived 

1  The  reference  here  is  not  to  those  periods  of  seeming  improvement  in 
general  paresis,  which  give  to  friends  false  hopes  of  recovery,  but  to  certain 
cases  where,  in  spite  of  the  most  undoubted  post-mortem  proofs  of  the  dis- 
ease, an  exhibition  of  a  still  vigorous  mind  has  been  made,  near  the  time  of 
death.  Such  cases  have  seemed  to  the  attending  physicians  like  the  coming 
to  life  of  an  already  dead  soul. 

2  Compare  an  Article  by  the  author  in  Mind  (new  series),  vol.  XII, 
pp.  374^. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE   INDIVIDUAL  533 

from  a  study  of  psycho-physical  formulas  seems  utterly  inap- 
plicable. Certainly,  artistic  and  moral  sentiments  and  ideals, 
religious  beliefs  and  conceptions,  and  the  spirit  of  filial  piety 
in  which  the  essence  of  subjective  religion  consists,  are  all  ex- 
periences of  the  same  soul  whose  sensory-motor  life  is  so 
strictly  correlated  with  the  functions  of  the  bodily  organism. 
Certainly,  too,  these  higher  activities  are  rarely  or  never  di- 
vorced from  their  accompaniment  of  the  lower.  For  it  is  as  an 
embodied  soul,  and  not  as  an  already  disembodied  spirit,  that 
the  human  being  is  an  artist,  a  devotee,  a  religious  idealist. 
On  the  other  hand,  neither  a  scientific  psychology,  nor  a  meta- 
physics of  the  Self  when  based  upon  such  a  psychology,  can  fail 
to  recognize  this  so-called  "  higher  nature  ''  in  which — to  use 
the  language  of  Kant — is  the  root  that  furnishes  "  the  indis- 
pensable condition  of  the  only  worth  that  men  can  give  them- 
selves." This  is  the  "power  which  elevates  man  above  him- 
self; .  .  .  a  power  which  connects  him  with  an  order  of  things 
that  only  the  understanding  can  conceive,  with  a  world  that 
commands  the  whole  sensible  world,  ...  as  well  as  the  sum- 
total  of  all  ends."  '*  This  power  is  nothing  but  personalitij^ 
that  is,  freedom  and  independence  of  the  mechanism  of  nature, 
...  a  faculty  of  a  being  which  is  subject  to  special  laws  .  .  . 
given  by  its  own  reason."  ^ 

In  a  word,  this  species  of  animal  called  "  human,"  by  wliat- 
ever  processes  stretching  through  a3ons  of  time  tlie  result  has 
come  about,  and  however  conditioned  upon  lower  psychical 
and  organic  attiiinments,  has,  in  fact,  developed  Self-hood. 
And  liaving  developed  selfhood,  man  lias  felt  within  him,  and 
ha.s  responded  to,  the  obligations  inherent  in  the  very  being  of 
a  Self ;  the  feeling  and  th(?  response  pledges  lii in  to  develop 
this  selfhood  in  liighcr  and  higher  stiges  toward  i\w.  realiza- 
tion of  its  own  Ideal.  Indeed,  ho  has  made  this  Ideal  of  Self- 
liood  tin'  Object  of  his  supreme  faitli,  the  j)attern  of  his  loftiest  as- 
piration and  endeavor,  and    the  guaranty  of  the  realization  of 

*  Sec  the  .Analytic  of  Turc  I'nirticul   Keason,  chap.   III. 


534  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

his  purest  and  most  uplifting  hopes.  All  this  experience  of  the 
present  actuality,  and  the  further  possibility,  of  a  share  in  the 
Divine  Life  can  neither  be  accounted  for  nor  understood,  in 
terms  of  the  physical  organism  or  of  that  life  which  biology 
investigates.  All  this  experience  tends  to  emphasize  the 
primacy  and  the  supremacy  of  spirit  over  a  material  body. 

The  conflict  between  modern  science  and  the  ancient  hopes 
of  religion  over  the  separability  of  the  soul  from  the  bodily 
organism,  when  fought  out  fairly  within  the  province  of  ex- 
perience open  to  biological,  pliysiological,  and  psycho -physical 
researches,  ends,  at  the  worst,  in  a  drawn  battle.  If  religion 
cannot  establish  its  affirmative  view,  and  demonstrate  experi- 
entially  this  separability ;  neither  can  science  bring  to  the  point 
of  a  demonstration  the  opposite  and  negative  view.  Can  the 
psychical  life,  or  any  part  of  it,  escape  destruction  when  that 
mechanism  of  "  protoplasmic  molecules,"  in  connection  with 
wdiich  it  has  developed,  is  dissolved?  Neither  biology,  nor 
pliysiology,  nor  psychology  of  the  physiological  or  psycho- 
physical type,  can  give  a  final  answer  to  this  question. 

One  conclusion,  however,  which  is  of  service  to  the  religious 
hope  is  fairly  to  be  derived  from  our  survey  of  the  problem 
upon  these  scientific  grounds.  No  words  that  imply  the  pos- 
sibility of  resolving  either  series — the  organic  and  physical,  or 
the  conscious  and  psychical — into  the  other,  fitly  express  the 
real  connections  between  the  two.  The  psychical  is  neither 
the  ''  product "  nor  the  "  function  "  ^  of  the  organic  :  nor  is  the 

1  For  this  reason  we  may  well  take  exception  to  the  admission  with  which 
Professor  James  (Ibid.,  p.  10)  begins  his  attempt  to  remove  objections  to 
the  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  individual : — namely,  that  thought  is  a 
''function"  of  the  brain,  and  that  "the  various  special  forms  of  thinking 
are  functions  of  special  portions  of  the  brain"  The  vrord  function  seems 
to  us  wholly  inappropriate  to  such  a  correlation.  Moreover,  the  distinc- 
tion between  different  kinds  of  functions  does  not  seem  necessarily  to 
help  the  case.  A  "permissive"  or  " transmissive "  function  may  just  as 
properly,  and  just  as  probably,  have  an  indissoluble  and  necessary  connec- 
tion with  the  brain  as  a  "productive"  function.     If  the  glass  is  shattered, 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  535 

reverse  statement  any  more  true.  No  such  words  reduce  the 
mystery  of  the  connection  ;  no  such  words  express  the  truth  of 
fact.  What  we  have  to  observe,  is  two  intimately  interrehited 
developments  of  wholly  different  species  ;  neither  of  which  can 
be  resolved  into  the  other,  and  neither  of  which  is  either  com- 
pletely describable  or  wholly  explicable  in  terms  of  the  other. 
To  scientific  observation  merely,  they  seem  to  begin  together  ; 
in  a  measure  only,  they  proceed  with  something  like  an  equal 
pace;  and,  then,  they  seem  to  cease  together.  But  the  traces 
of  both  are  permanently  made  in  the  world's  subsequent  history. 
Science  assumes  that  the  physical  elements  continue  to  exist  and 
to  have  their  value  expressed  in  the  reality  of  the  system  of 
things ;  religion  believes  in,  and  hopes  for,  something  of  the 
same  sort  for  the  life  of  self-conscious  striving,  doing,  and 
realizing  of  its  own  spiritual  ends. 

If  modern  psychology  supports  the  religious  hope  of  immor- 
tality for  the  individual  by  refusing  credence  to  the  objections 
of  biology  and  physiology,  the  same  thing  cannot  be  said  of 
some  of  the  more  positive  grounds  on  which  this  hope  has  tried 
to  build  an  argument  in  its  own  defence.  This  is  especially 
true  of  the  doctrine  of  tlie  so-called  "  natural  immortality  "  of 
the  human  soul.  The  essential  feature  of  this  doctrine  in  each 
of  its  several  forms  consists  in  the  belief  that  the  known  unity 
and  reality  of  the  soul  can  properly  be  stated  in  such  terms  as 
necessarily  to  imply  its  indestructibility.  So  it  was  held  by 
the  Hindu  conception  of  Atman  ;  and  in  like  manner  by  that 
theological  proof  whicli  the  Kantian  criticism  undertook  to 
overthrow.  In  the  latter  cfise  the  argument  ran  :  (a)  The 
soul  is  known  to  be  a  unity,  in  the  strictest  meaning  of  tlio 
term  ;  (b)  it  is,  therefore,  indiscerptible  and  cannot,  like  the 
body  be  resolved  into  its  elementid  constituents  ;  (c)  but  this 

or  resolved  into  siind  and  potash,  it  will  no  longer  tran^viit  the  light.  A 
complete  disiigreoinent  would  scorn  to  be  inevitable  with  all  the  quasi- 
muterialifltic  ways  of  representing  the  relations  of  mind  and  body,  if  one 
is  to  make  room  in  this  sphere  for  the  doctrine  of  the  separability  of  the 
one  from  the  other. 


536  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

is  the  equivalent  of  its  absolute  indestructibility.  It  is  cus- 
tomary to  represent  Kant  as  overthrowing  this  so-called  proof 
by  the  force  of  his  criticism.  On  the  one  hand,  this  criticism 
showed  that  what  we  really  know  as  tlie  Erjo^  or  soul,  in  con- 
sciousness, is  only  a  phenomenal  reality  and  no  "  thing-in- 
itself ;  "  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  pointed  out  that  in  experience 
the  soul  plainly  shows  itself  to  be  capable  of  parting  with  its 
existence  by  a  process  of  diminishing  down  to  zero,  or  to  the 
vanishing  point,  all  the  activities  in  which  its  phenomenal 
reality  consists. 

Both  the  theological  proof,  and  its  critical  and  sceptical  refu- 
tation, have  alike  ceased  to  have  much  pertinence  or  available 
meaning  for  modern  psychology.  In  its  scientific  estimate 
there  is  no  actual,  or  even  conceivable  evidence  to  show  the 
existence,  either  within  consciousness  or  out  of  consciousness, 
either  as  inseparably  connected  with  the  bodily  organism  or 
as  presumably  separable  from  this  organism,  of  a  "  thing-in- 
itself  "  soul.  From  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  an  Atman- 
like  entity,  which  could  continue  to  exist  after  it  had  ceased 
to  vindicate  its  existence  by  doing  anything  knowable  or  imag- 
inable in  the  system  of  actualities,  cannot  be  empirically  known. 
Nor  need  religion  mourn  the  loss  of  such  a  soul.  For  it  would 
be  as  totally  without  value  as  it  is  confessedly  without  charac- 
teristics. To  lose  it  and  to  save  it  would  be  alike  a  matter  of 
indifference. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  modern  psychology  reveals  the  path 
along  which  the  hope  of  religion  may  travel  to  its  desired  goal. 
The  unity  and  reality  oj  the  human  soul  consists  in  its  actually 
leing  a  Self.  To  be  self-conscious,  to  remember  recognitively, 
to  reason  rationally,  to  feel  the  worth  of  ethical  and  sesthetical 
obligations  and  ideals,  and  to  determine  conduct  with  a  view 
to  discharge  these  obligations  and  to  realize  these  ideals — this 
it  is  really  to  be,  and  to  be  one,  after  the  pattern  of  a  human 
soul,  or  Self.  To  attain  more  in  quantity,  and  higher  degrees 
of  quality,  of  this  life  of  Selfhood  ; — this  is  to  reach  more  com- 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  537 

pletely  the  ends  of  unity  and  reality,  as  these  ends  are  divinely 
natural  for  man — the  potential  son  of  God.  It  is  the  hope 
that  death  does  not  set  the  final  limit,  the  impassable  barrier, 
to  this  process  of  the  realization  of  immortal  life  which  religion 
aims  to  secure.  If  these  aims  cannot  be  furthered  by  a  dem- 
onstration of  the  natural  indiscerptibility,  and  separableness 
from  the  dissolving  organism,  of  an  indescribable  "  thing-in- 
itself  "  soul,  the  disappointment  has  its  sting  quite  withdrawn 
when  it  is  shown  that  the  modern  psychological  view  recog- 
nizes no  such  present  existence  of  a  soul. 

It  remains,  then,  to  inquire  on  what  positive  grounds  the 
hope  of  immortality  for  the  individual  can  most  securely  re- 
pose ?  To  this  question  the  one  inclusive  answer  can  be  given  : 
On  the  grounds  of  that  faith  in  the  Being  of  the  World  as  per- 
fect Ethical  Spirit,  and  in  man's  potential  likeness  to  this  Being, 
which  religion  itself  accepts  and  establishes.  If  this  faitli  is 
rational ;  then  the  hope  of  immortality  may  be  esteemed 
rational.  If  this  faith  cannot  sustain  the  tests  of  modern  sci- 
ence and  reflective  thinking;  then  much  less  can  the  hope  of 
immortality  for  the  individual  sustain  these  test^.  In  other 
words,  it  is  the  world-view  of  religion  which  is  on  trial ; — and 
this  as  enfolding  and  involving  the  destiny  of  the  race  and  of 
the  individual  man.  He  who  believes  that  the  system  of  cos- 
mic existences,  forces,  and  processes,  in  the  midst  of  which  man 
hits  hitherto  developed,  in  which  lie  is  now  set,  and  with  wliich 
his  destiny  is  interlocked,  is  moral  and  spiritual  to  the  core,  ho 
may  cherish  the  hope  of  immortality  without  being  inherently 
inconsistent  in  his  thinking  and  liis  beliefs.  For  liim,  however, 
who  finds  in  this  system  no  Presence  of  the  Infinite  Personal 
Life,  to  expect  his  own  conscious  life  to  tnmscend  tiie  particu- 
lar combination  of  "protoplasmic  molecules"  which  forms  for 
it  a  temporary  physical  al>ode,  is  to  indulge  an  illogical,  if  not 
an  altogether  ilhisory,  hope.  The  hope  of  iinmortiility  for  the 
individual  is  a  hoiKi  in  God  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  regnant 
over  all  life  in  every  st^ige  and  form  of  its  manifesUition. 


588  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

This  general  argument,  or  ground  of  confidence,  may  be 
analyzed,  as  it  were,  into  a  number  of  particulars.  In  con- 
sidering the  value  of  each  of  these  so-called  "  proofs,"  how- 
ever, it  should  be  remembered  what  is  the  essential  character 
of  the  tenability — the  nervus  prohandi — belonging  to  them  all. 
For  example,  while  it  must  be  held  that  the  naturalness  of  the 
belief  in  the  continuance  of  the  psychical  life  after  death  is  not 
a  proof  of  the  natural  immortality  of  the  individual,  the  crav- 
ings, anticipations,  fears,  and  hopes,  of  the  race  with  regard  to 
the  future  are  a  most  impressive  spectacle.  They  show  how 
deeply  set  in  persistent  human  feeling,  and  in  permanent  allied 
convictions,  is  the  belief  of  man  in  his  own  power  to  survive 
death.  The  spectacle  is  no  less  impressive  when  it  takes  the 
form  of  those  fears  of  this  permanency,  which  give  the  doctrine 
of  Karma  such  control  over  millions  of  minds.  At  the  other 
extreme,  stands  the  joyful  expectation  of  realizing  at  once  the 
blessings  of  a  more  intimate  communion  with,  and  a  more  per- 
fect likeness  to,  the  Divine  Being,  with  which  millions  of 
Christian  and  other  religious  devotees  have  contemplated  death. 
There  is  in  this  spectacle  no  demonstration,  indeed,  of  a  reality 
for  that  which  awakens  such  fears  or  such  hopes  ;  science  can, 
indeed,  point  its  finger  to  many  another  wide-spread  fear  and 
hope  for  which  it  has  been  compelled  to  expose  the  absence  of 
any  correlated  actuality.  But  on  the  assumption  that  God  is 
in  the  world,  and  in  the  race,  as  a  righteous  Ruler  and  a  loving 
Redeemer,  these  persistent  feelings  and  permanent  beliefs  ac- 
quire a  new  significance  and  a  greatly  increased  value. 

When  these  more  primitive  forms  of  feeling  are  developed 
into  the  more  refined  forms  of  sesthetical  and  ethical  sentiment, 
they  become  powerful  and  effective  pleaders  for  the  belief  in 
the  possibility  of  the  finite  Self  attaining  the  gift  of  immortal 
life.  Our  entire  study  of  man's  religious  experience  and  reli- 
gious development  has  made  us  familiar  with  the  undoubted 
ontological  value  of  his  sesthetical  ideals.  Whether  from  the 
scientific  and  philosophical,  or  from  the  more  definitely  reli- 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  539 

gious  point  of  view,  the  human  mind  insists  upon  constructing 
its  theory  of  reality  under  the  influence  of  these  ideals.  Only 
in  this  way  can  the  world  seem  actually  to  be  the  sublime,  beau- 
tiful and  orderly,  though  profoundly  mysterious  totality,  which 
affords  satisfaction  to  this  side  of  human  nature.  If  the  astro- 
nomical and  physical  sciences  compel  him  to  believe  that  this 
marvelous  mechanism  of  a  Cosmos  has  built  itself  up,  only  to 
end  in  self-destruction,  and  then  to  begin  over  again  the  pro- 
cess of  self-building,  the  lover  of  truth  tries  to  remain  faitliful 
in  feeling  as  well  as  thought  to  the  truth,  and  comforts  himself 
as  best  he  may.  But  by  universal  confession,  tlie  conclusion 
that  the  end-all  is  the  destruction  of  all,  takes  much  of  the  ad- 
miration, and  most  of  the  lesthetical  satisfaction,  out  of  the 
spirit  with  which  man  regards  the  totality  of  the  cosmic  proc- 
esses and  forces.  If,  at  the  last,  it  all  comes  to  this  :  Why 
was  it  at  all  ?  and  Is  it  worth  while  that  it  should  be  at  all  ? 
And  when  his  own  destiny  is  so  conceived  of  as  to  be  help- 
lessly and  inextricably  entangled  in  tliis  march  to  final  ruin  of 
the  cosmic  Mechanism,  there  is  evolved  a  strong  reaction  against 
so  shocking  and  repulsive  a  theory  of  the  purposeless  and  ideally 
unproductive  character  of  man's  evolution  in  history.  It  is 
difficult,  or  impossible,  to  state  this  theory  in  terms  tliat  do  not 
rob  human  history  of  its  sesthetically  grand  and  sublime  fea- 
tures. And  when  the  attempt  is  further  made — as  it  is  pretty 
sure  to  be  made,  so  strong  and  persistent  are  the  demands  for 
satisfaction  wliich  tlio  iestlietical  nature  continues  to  put  forth — 
to  elevate  our  depressed  spirits  by  lauding  the  artistic  qualities 
of  the  Mechanism,  or  by  praising  the  system  under  torms  of  do- 
mestic end(!arment,  as  our  '^  Universal  Mother,'*  etc.  ;  the  suc- 
cess of  the  attem[)t  is  measured  by  the  exact  distance  of  its 
virtual  departure  from  its  own  chosen  point  of  view.  In  the 
cosmic  family  cii*cle  Dame  Nature's  character  cannot  bo  im- 
proved at  the  ex[)enso  of  the  perfection  of  God  the  Father. 

It  is  under  tlie  same  pressure  of  demands  from  the  rising  and 
broadt;nin<r  itsthetical  ideals  uf  humanitv  that  science  has  built 


540  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

up  its  engaging  picture  of  a  perfect  cosmic  order,  and  that  re- 
ligion has  attained  to  the  conception  of  the  all-admirable  and 
sublime  Being  of  God.  Worshipful  admiration  and  obedience 
is  tlie  correct  attitude  of  the  human  soul  toward  this  Object. 
If  the  one  structure  has,  for  the  time  being,  seemed  the  rather 
to  belittle  the  importance  of  man  in  the  World- All ;  the  other 
structure  has  more  and  more  emphasized  his  importance.  The 
social  and  political  development  of  humanity  has  taken  sides 
with  the  religious  in  this  regard.  The  lives  and  the  destiny 
of  the  millions  of  mankind  can  no  longer  be  regarded  as  of 
little  or  no  account,  without  giving  a  shock  to  the  dominant 
sesthetical  ideals.  Neither  the  Court  of  Heaven  nor  the  courts 
of  earth  are  longer  tolerated  by  the  more  truly  refined  sestheti- 
cal  feeling,  if  they  continue  to  treat  these  millions  as  things  of 
little  worth.  The  very  fact  that  the  physical  and  biological 
sciences  recognize  the  obligation  to  make  grander  and  more 
beautiful  the  brief  earthly  life  of  these  lowly  ones,  is  an  un- 
conscious testimony  toward  the  confirmation  of  the  truth  for 
which  we  are  contending.  The  belief  in  the  value  of  human 
Selfhood — that  supreme  product  of  evolution  which  has  cost 
the  Cosmos  so  many  countless  ceons  of  struggle,  pain,  and  sac- 
rifice— is  a  belief  which  is  ever  taking  firmer  roots  in  the  ses- 
thetical  nature  of  humanity.  This  estimate  of  value  is  greatly 
enhanced  by  the  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  individual. 
Thus  this  belief  has  increasingly  on  its  side  the  demands  for 
satisfaction  of  the  profoundest  sesthetical  sentiments  of  human 
nature. 

Closely  allied  with,  and  indeed  scarcely  separable  from,  the 
influence  of  sesthetical  sentiments  and  ideals  is  the  powerful 
influence  which  comes  from  the  demands  for  satisfaction  of 
the  choicest  affections  and  purest  altruistic  sentiments.  It  has 
already  been  repeatedly  shown  liow,  in  their  cruder  form,  these 
feelings  liave  operated  in  tlie  production  and  development  of 
certain  nearl}^  or  quite  universal  religious  beliefs.  Especially 
true  is  this  of  the  worship   of  ancestors  and  of  deified  men. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  541 

Tills  pathetic  and  persistent  following  of  the  beloved  dead  with 
the  hope  of  future  life  and  the  expectation  of  future  reunion, 
is  not  an  argument  for  immortality  which  can  be  thrown  into 
the  form  of  a  syllogism  ;  much  less  is  it  a  deaionstration  that 
is  unassailable  by  modern  science.  That  it  is,  however,  a  most 
potent  cause  of  the  actual  arising  and  persistence  of  the  belief 
in  immortality,  those  who  have  had  experience  with  the  tlioughts 
of  men  cannot  for  a  moment  doubt.  Plutarcli  speaks  for  count- 
less millions  of  human  souls  when,  in  a  letter  of  consolation 
to  his  wife  on  the  death  of  their  young  daughter,  he  tries  to 
show  that  those  who  die  in  infancy  and  youth  will  earlier  feel 
at  home  in  tlie  other  world.^  This  is  the  reason  wliy  the  laws 
do  not  allow  mourning  for  children  of  such  tender  years  : 
"l)ecause  they  have  gone  to  dwell  in  a  better  land,  and  to 
share  a  diviner  lot."  Plutarch  is  well  aware  that  such  ques- 
tions are  involved  in  great  uncertainty  ;  but  he  finds  it  more 
difficult  to  disbelieve  than  to  believe.'^  All  such  l)eliefs  and 
sentiments,  however,  are  only  "  outstretching  of  vain  hands,'* 
if  the  fundamental  faith  of  religion  in  God  as  perfect  Ethical 
Spirit,  and  in  tlie  experienced  world  as  a  dependent  manifestix- 
tion  of  God,  cannot  be  rationally  sustained.  AVlitMi  connected 
with  this  fundamental  faith,  however,  they  rise  to  a  quite  dif- 
ferent level  of  significance  and  vahie  as  arguments  for  the 
belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  individual. 

Tliese  tcsthetical  and  altruistic  affections  and  sentiments 
are,  moreover,  closely  allied  with  certiiin  demands  for  satisfac- 
tion of  the  moral  consciousness  itself,  on  the  side  both  of  feel- 
ing and  oi  thought.  In  trying  to  estimate  that  evidence  from 
the  presence  and  the  pereistence  of  evil  which  makes  a  theodicy 
so  ditVKmlt,  it  was  found  that  tlie  unfinisht'd,  imperfect,  frag- 
mentary cliaractcr  of  human  ethical  experience  had  chietly  to 
1x3  taken  into  tlio  account.  At  this  point  the  doctrine  of 
develo[)ment  afTorded  us  a  logical  retreat  and  a  source  of  con- 

>  Consolatio  ad   r\(jrum. 

'Compare  also  his  thought  as  expreaecd,  De  Defect.  Orac,  43/. 


542  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

solation  and  hope.  The  extension  of  this  doctrine  into  the 
life  beyond,  both  for  the  individual  and  for  the  race,  is  con- 
nected in  a  most  important  way  with  the  belief  in  God  as  per- 
fect Ethical  Spirit — the  Moral  Ruler  and  the  Redeemer  of 
mankind,  in  and  through  a  process  of  history.  If  death  ends 
all  for  all  men,  it  is  difficult  or  impossible  to  see  how  the  per- 
fect Divine  righteousness  can  vindicate  itself.  An  "  over- 
World  "  seems  required  in  order  that  the  "  over-Man  "  may  be 
evolved,  and  secure  his  appropriate  sphere  of  conduct ;  in 
order  that  justice  may  be  done,  wrong  righted,  and  character 
find  its  legitimate,  full  expression  and  outcome.  It  was  con- 
fidence in  the  perfection  of  the  World's  moral  order,  if  only 
the  theatre  for  the  exhibition  of  this  order  could  be  made 
extensive  enough,  and  if  the  play  could  be  carried  through 
to  the  end,  which  gave  to  the  Kantian  critique  its  argument 
for  immortality  as  the  necessary  postulate  of  an  absolute 
truth  for  the  moral  reason.  This  moral  reason  must  he  some- 
how satisfied.  The  conditions  of  man's  earthly  existence, 
however,  could  never  be  conceived  of  as  so  modified  that  the 
unconditioned  and  perfect  ideal  could  be  set  into  reality  in 
the  midst  of  them.  Thus  the  largeness  and  the  permanency 
of  the  faith  of  moral  reason  in  its  own  ideal  guaranteed  the 
realization,  somewhere  and  somehow,  of  this  same  ideal.  But 
such  a  realization  implied  the  immortality  of  the  individual ; 
for  it  could  only  be  accomplished  through  the  continuance  of 
a  kingdom  of  ends,  in  which  personal  wills,  and  the  relations 
of  such  wills,  attained  their  completeness  in  an  historical  de- 
velopment. Defective  as  the  Kantian  argument  is,  in  respect 
of  its  alleged  apodeictic  character,  the  considerations  which 
flow  from  those  ethical  ideals  and  principles  to  which  the 
argument  appeals,  will  always  remain  the  most  firm  and  reason- 
able of  the  supports  for  this  important  hope  of  the  religious 
man. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  the  considerations  to  which  Greek 
philosophy  gave  a  preference  unite  with   the   later   faith   of 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  543 

Judaism,  as  modified  and  reinforced  by  the  religion  of  Christ 
and  by  the  Christian  experience.  Greek  religious  philosophy 
had  come  to  appreciate  the  intrinsic  worth  of  the  life  of  the 
Self ; — the  lofty,  imperative  character  of  its  ideals,  and  the 
promise  of  a  higlier  and  more  perfect  realization  of  those 
ideals.  Thus  it  gave  the  legitimacy  of  reason  to  the  attempt 
of  tlie  individual  to  realize  the  ideal  life.  All  the  Platonic 
arguments,  for  example,  spring  from  the  deathless  conception 
of  a  worth  to  the  soul-life,  which  can  neither  be  measured  nor 
expressed  in  terms  of  this  sensuous  and  earthless  existence. 
But  Judaism  had  develo^^ed  tlie  conception  of  God  as  the  per- 
fectly righteous  ruler  of  the  living  and  of  the  dead.  And 
Jesus,  out  of  his  own  consciousness  of  a  perfect  union  between 
his  own  spirit  and  the  perfectly  holy  and  pitiful  Spirit  of  the 
Father  and  Redeemer  of  mankind,  had  brought  the  hope  of 
immortal  life  into  the  clear  light  of  an  experienced  fact. 

This  Greek  estimate  of  the  inlierent  worth  and  dignity  of  Self- 
hood, and  of  the  place  and  value  of  the  individual's  soul  in  the 
universal  scheme,  is  not  precisely  the  equivalent  of  the  argu- 
ments current  in  Christian  theology  for  the  so-called  "natural 
immortality"  of  the  individual.  But  so  far  as  it  tends  to 
secure  the  interests  of  the  individual  as  against  the  specific  and 
the  general,  and  especially  of  the  individual  pei-son  as  against 
all  that  has  only  material  values  or  physical  magnitudes  upon 
its  side,  it  is  thoroughly  in  accord  with  the  most  indisputable 
conclusions  of  modern  idealistic  philosophy.  The  current  phys- 
ical science  tends  constantly  to  overestimate  the  importance 
of  what  bulks  large;  or  of  what  is  so  minute,  and  at  the  same 
time  multitudinous,  that  to  express  it  recjuires  impressive  rows 
of  figures  long  drawn-out.  Tlie  greatness  of  individual  men  is 
something  to  Ixi  scaled  accurately  and  put  into  mathematical 
terms  with  marketable  values  ;  and  the  wortli  of  nations  is 
deemed  to  Iw  l)est  statable  in  terms  of  the  size  of  their  popula- 
tions, of  their  armies  and  navies,  of  their  agricultunil  and  otlier 
product8,  their  imports  and  their  exporUs.      Biological  science 


544  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

emphasizes  the  value  of  the  improved  species — at  however  great 
expense  of  countless  individuals.  But  there  is  another  side  to 
all  this,  even  in  tiie  case  of  individual  beings  far  below  the  scale 
of  moral  and  spiritual  values  which  are  applicable  to  human 
lives.  Lender  certain  not  inconceivable,  but  frequently  recur- 
ring circumstances  in  human  history,  a  few  atoms  may  be  more 
influential  to  determine  its  course,  than  are  scores  of  the  bulk- 
iest worlds  ;  and  a  single  fertilized  human  ovum  may  become 
the  bearer  of  a  soul  that  shall  influence  the  destiny  of  millions 
of  the  race. 

There  are  not  wanting  indications  that  both  science  and 
philosophy  are  approaching  a  common  point  of  view,  from 
which  the  significance  and  the  value  of  the  individual — of 
whatever  species  or  kind — are  made  much  more  important  and 
emphatic  than  has  hitherto  been  the  case.  From  this  point  of 
view  it  would  seem  that  every  atom,  every  mass,  every  organ- 
ized being,  every  ovum  or  germ,  has  its  own  peculiar  existence, 
special  value,  and  unique  part  to  phiy  in  the  planful  system  of 
the  universe  at  large.  Nothing  is  to  be  regarded  as  accurately 
defined  or  sufficiently  estimated,  when  it  has  simply  been 
classified  and  assigned  to  its  proper  species.  Everything  has 
just  that  reality  which  it  has,  because  it  is  an  individual  being, 
the  exact  like  of  which  never  has  been,  and  never  will  be 
again ;  that  is  to  say,  the  essence  of  its  reality,  and  the  pledge 
of  its  continuance  in  existence,  whether  for  a  longer  or  a 
shorter  time,  is  its  indi^ddualit3^  No  thing  is  so  mean,  no  ex- 
istence so  transitory,  no  so-called  force  so  impotent  to  produce 
actual  changes,  as  that  it  can  be  adequately  conceived  of,  or 
expressed,  in  terms  of  the  species,  or  in  the  nomenclature  of 
the  universal.  For  us,  and  also  "  in-itself,"  the  LTltimate 
Reality,  is  concretely  present  and  actual,  in  the  infinite  differ- 
entiations of  individual  beings — self-like  Things  or  developed 
Selves. 

When  any  individual  member  of  the  species  called  "  human  " 
has  reached  that  acme  of  all  evolutionary  processes,  so  far  as 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  545 

these  processes  are  subject  to  investigation  at  all,  which  con- 
sists in  the  attainment  of  a  moral  and  spiritual  Selfhood,  some- 
thing has  come  into  being  which  reflection  pronounces  to  have 
an  incomparable  worth.  Each  individual  Self  is,  indeed,  only 
one  of  many ;  but  this  fact  gives  a  supreme  value  to  the 
existence  and  destiny  of  a  race  which  is  the  summing-up  of  all 
tliat  lies  behind  in  the  history  of  the  Cosmos,  and  the  promise 
of  all  that  is  to  come.  Nature  has  now  produced  a  kind  of 
individual  which,  however  it  may  be  compelled  to  sacrifice 
itself  for  others  of  its  kind,  can  never  be  reasonably  compelled 
to  this  sacrifice  by  the  offer  of  a  good  less  valuable  than  that 
which  measures  up  to  tlie  full  value  of  the  perfected  life  of  a 
Self.  Hence  the  determination  of  the  multitudes — essentially 
reasonable  and  sure  to  prevail,  however  blind  and  unconscious 
in  its  exercise — to  force  tlie  few  to  count  them  all,  each  one 
therein,  too,  as  a  thing  of  greatest  worth ;  because  each  indi- 
vidual of  these  multitudes  is  a  Self  among  selves,  is  one  among 
the  many  brethren  that  are  all  children  of  God. 

This  estimate  of  the  "  cosmic  value  "  of  a  perpetuated  self- 
existence,  such  as  the  human  species  has  already  somehow  come 
to  share,  is  further  enhanced  b}'  consideiing  its  inherent  capac- 
ity for  an  unlimited  future  development.  There  is  no  sad- 
der or  more  impressive  example  of  a  certain  incongruit}^  be- 
tween the  spiritual  potentials  and  the  actual  achievements  of 
the  evolutionary  forces  than  that  afforded  by  the  fate  of  the  in- 
dividual man.  If  his  development  is  fortunate,  it  is  just  when 
this  developnjent  becomes  most  promising  and  most  aspiring 
that  ita  physical  basis  begins  to  sliow  most  marked  signs  of  an 
oncoming  decay.  In  the  order  of  nature,  it  requires  all  the 
earlier  yeara  of  youth  and  manliood,  well  spent,  to  equip  the 
Self  with  such  self-possession  as  fits  it  for  the  beginning  of  a 
truer  realization  of  its  awakening  and  rising  ideals.  Then 
comes  almost  at  once  an  experience  l>orn  of  tlie  degeneration  of 
animal  tissues, — a  sure  pn^i^nostic  of  tlio  approaching  dissolu- 
tion  of  the  organism.      The  spirit  has   just  got  ready  to  live, 

35 


546  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

and  the  body  is  beginning  already  to  die.  Thus  the  capacity 
of  the  individual  man  for  self-development — a  capacity  which 
is  inherent  in  the  very  being  of  every  Self — does  not  seem  to 
be  exhausted,  or  in  any  satisfactory  degree  provided  for,  by 
even  the  four  or  five-score  years  which  mark  the  extreme 
limit  of  time  allowed  by  nature  for  this  development.  How- 
ever we  may  seem  compelled  by  the  facts  to  assume  an  attitude 
of  indifference  to  the  influence  of  such  considerations,  it  is  . 
difficult  not  to  sympathize  with  the  complaints  of  the  most 
highly  gifted  men  as  they  contemplate  this  seemingly  pre- 
mature cessation  of  opportunity.  All  their  most  worthy  and 
cherished  attainments  of  knowledge,  skill,  social  influence,  and 
moral  character,  seem  as  nothing  compared  with  what  might  be 
in  the  future — if  only  that  future  lay  open  before  them. 

Of  course,  if  the  Being  of  the  World  has  no  mind  to  com- 
prehend or  heart  to  feel  this  pitiful  irrationality  in  its  procedure, 
then  all  such  arguments  are  powerless  to  produce  a  rational  ex- 
pectation of  immortality  for  the  individual.  But  we  have  not 
so  learned  the  Being  of  the  World.  We  may,  therefore,  agree 
with  the  declaration  of  a  modern  writer  who  lias  approached 
this  problem  from  a  quite  different  point  of  view.  This  writer 
maintains  that  the  belief  in  immortality  is  "  a  supreme  act  of 
faith  in  the  reasonableness  of  God's  work."^  This  so-called 
"  reasonableness,"  however,  is  not  that  which  science  recognizes 
as  inherent  in  the  Cosmos  when  regarded  only  as  a  system 
of  physical  forces  subject  to  the  poetic  sovereignty  of  a  so- 
called  "  reign  of  law."  It  is  moral  reason  immanent  in  Self- 
hood, and  regnant,  in  spite  of  all  appearances  to  the  contrary, 
in  human  history.  He  who  holds  valid  the  conception  of  God 
as  Ethical  Spirit,  absolute  in  power  and  infinite  in  perfections, 

1  Fiske,  Destiny  of  Man,  p.  115/.  This  statement  is  made  as  in  agree- 
ment with  the  view  of  the  authors  of  the  "Unseen  Universe;"  and  the 
opinion  is  added  that  our  increase  of  knowledge  as  to  the  process  of  evohi- 
tion  enables  us  to  claim  "the  everlasting  persistence  of  the  spiritual  element 
in  man,"  or  else  we  "rob  the  whole  process  of  its  meaning." 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  547 

and  who  therefore  takes  the  predominatingly  aesthethical  and 
moral  view  of  the  cosmic  system  of  things  and  selves,  secures 
in  this  way  a  reasonable  ground  of  hope  for  the  immortality  of 
the  individual. 

As  to  the  formal  and  material  details  of  the  immortal  life  of 
the  individual,  a  confession  of  ignorance  is  the  only  justifiable 
attitude  of  mind.  In  its  highest  realization  the  hope  of  immor- 
tality is  an  experience  of  a  relatively  small  number  of  those 
who  have  most  closely  followed  Jesus,  the  founder  of  the 
hope  in  its  more  definitely  Christian  form.  Such  examples  are 
afforded  by  the  Apostles  Paul  and  John  and  by  other  Christian 
saints.  In  all  the  experience  of  these  men,  the  central  and 
controlling  factor  is  the  consciousness  of  a  new  spiritual  life 
aheady  begun,  the  essential  character  of  which  is  expressed  by 
calling  it  a  life  "  in  Christ "  or  "  in  God."  The  actuality  and 
progress  of  this  life,  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  death,  either  to 
destroy  or  effectually  to  interrupt.  It  may,  indeed,  be  mo- 
mentarily obscured  by  periods  of  bodily  weakness  and  mental 
depression.  But  such  periods  are  succeeded  by  an  increase  of 
confidence,  by  a  more  assured  hope  brought  about  by  a  more 
perfect  trust  in  God.  It  is  on  account  of  the  characteristic 
marks  of  such  a  life  of  ecstacy,  longing,  and  faith,  that  the 
Apostle  Paul  is  said  to  have  become  "  the  type  of  the  mystics."  ^ 
As  to  his  detailed  teachings  about  the  way  in  which  the  hope 
of  immortality  is  to  be  realized,  this  Apostle,  in  common  with 
other  writers  of  the  New  Testament,  shows  the  influence  of 
the  current  views  of  the  later  Jewish  apocalypse,  althougli 
in  a  form  modified  by  intimations  of  those  profounder  and 
more  ultimate  spiritual  conceptions  which  were  inherLMit  in  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  redemption. 

Such  experiences  prove  that  it  is  possible  for  the  individual 
believer,  who  has  realized  the  convictions  of  subjective  religion 
in  their  highest  intensity,  to  develop  a  certainty  of  immortal 
life,  whicli  admits  no  doubt,  and  which  feels  no  hick  of  joyful 

»  Wcrnlc,  Beginnings  of  Christianity,  I,  p.  354. 


548  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

assurance.  The  Self  is  convinced  that  it  has  already  gained 
possession  of  life  eternal.  But  such  experiences  cannot  be 
converted  into  an  argument  valid  for  all.  The  experience 
itself,  however,  is  a  fact ;  it  is  not  confined  to  the  Christian  reli- 
gion ;  in  varying  degrees  and  intensities  its  conviction  of  hope 
has  been,  and  still  is,  the  possession  of  millions  of  mankind. 

As  to  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  more  particularly,  the 
modern  highly  refined  theories  of  the  molecular  constitution 
and  amazingly  subtile  nature  of  material  bodies  may  perhaps 
be  held  to  favor  the  prospect  of  finding  in  the  near  future  a 
more  firmly  established  scientific  basis  for  this  doctrine.  They 
certainly  on  the  whole  tend  toward  confirming  the  conclusion : 
"Matter  is  not  that  which  produces  consciousness,  but  that 
which  limits  it  and  confines  its  intensity  within  certain 
bounds."  ^  In  this  connection  a  passing  reference  to  physical 
manifestations  of  the  continued  existence  of  the  dead,  is  not 
inappropriate.  Judged  by  those  standards  of  moral  and  spirit- 
ual values  which  the  philosophy  of  religion  must  ever  keep  in 
mind,  these  alleged  manifestations,  even  if  their  reality  be  ad- 
mitted, cannot  be  given  any  important  place.  They  may  serve 
as  comforting  and  cheering  phenomena  to  those  who  believe  in 
them,  but  they  contribute  little  or  nothing  to  the  rationality  of 
religious  hope  and  faith,  in  the  large,  so  to  say.  Toward  them 
the  open  and  yet  somewhat  severely  critical  attitude  of  mind 
is  still  the  only  rational  attitude.  The  essential  beliefs,  senti- 
ments, and  practices  of  the  religious  life  cannot  safely  be  al- 
lowed to  be  at  all  intimately  entangled  with  the  so-called 
"  spiritualistic  "  proofs  of  an  existence  after  death. 

There  are  two  important  deductions,  however,  from  the  con- 
ception of  God  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  which  may  confidently 
be  held  to  be  applicable  to  the  immortal  life  of  the  individual. 
One  of  these  establishes  the  moral  continuity  of  the  two  lives — 
or  rather  the  two  stages  of  the  one  life  of  the  same  Self.  In 
this  reasonable  conviction  the  Egyptian  harper  sang  :  "  Mind 

1  So  Schiller,  Riddles  of  the  Sphinx,  p.  293. 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  549 

thee  of  the  days  when  thou,  too,  shalt  start  for  the  land  to  which 
one  goeth  to  return  not  thence.  Good  for  thee  will  have  been 
a  good  life  ;  therefore  be  just  and  hate  iniquity ;  for  he  who 
loveth  what  is  Right  shall  triumph."  About  all  this  there  is 
no  word  to  be  uttered  more  penetrating  and  final  than  the  pro- 
phetic exhortation  :  "  Say  ye  to  the  lighteous,  that  it  shall  be 
well  with  him  "  ;  "  Woe  unto  the  wicked,  it  shall  be  ill  with 
him." 

With  this  moral  principle  in  its  application  to  the  life  after 
death,  if  such  life  there  is  to  be  for  the  individual  man,  goes 
another  as  its  supplement,  which  is  the  specially  precious  gift 
of  the  religion  of  Christ  to  the  faith  and  hope  of  mankind. 
Widespreading  restorative  and  redemptive  influences  are  in 
the  Divine  plan  ;  and  these  influences  cannot  be  limited  to  this 
side  of  bodily  death.  Here  again,  a  confession  of  ignorance, 
in  closest  conjunction  with  a  confession  of  faith  in  the  perfect 
justice  and  goodness  of  God,  best  accords  with  the  spirit  of 
piety.  As,  however,  the  conception  of  the  perfection  of  the 
Divine  Spirit,  and  so  of  the  fullness  and  completeness  of  the 
work  to  be  expected  from  Him,  rises  and  greatens,  one  of  two 
consequences  would  seem  to  follow  with  reference  to  the  per- 
manent condition  and  values  of  the  life  of  every  individual 
human  Self.  This  life  must  either  come  to  be  rooted  in  a  vol- 
untary, moral  union  with  the  Divine  Life  ;  or  else  it  mustper- 
isli,  lacking  life  in  itself ;  it  cannot  attain  immortality  apart 
from  life  in  God.  In  a  word  :  The  essentials  of  the  belief  in 
immortiility  for  the  individual  can  be  maintained  only  in  the 
form  of  a  confidence  that  God,  in  wliom  every  individual  of 
the  human  race  lives  and  moves  and  has  his  l)eing,  will  con- 
tinue to  preserve  and  to  develop  the  life  of  all  those  whose 
preservation  and  progress  accord  with  his  most  holy  and  benefi- 
cent World-plan.  Rut  the  rising  faith  of  religion  is  that  this 
Divine  World-plan  will  somehow  show  itself  in  the  future  us 
tlie  redemption  of  the  race. 


CHAPTER  XLVI 

THE  FUTURE  OF   THE  RACE 

It  has  been  made  obvious  by  our  historical  and  psycho- 
logical investigation  that  religion,  in  accordance  with  its  very 
nature  and  especially  in  its  more  important  developments,  does 
not  fail  in  adaptability  either  to  the  individual  or  to  the  race. 
It  is  for  each  human  being  a  very  particular  affair ;  it  provides 
for  him  an  object  of  belief,  feeling,  and  devotion,  which  is  spe- 
cific, and  which  comes  into  the  most  intimate  relations  with  his 
daily  life.  But  religion  is  also  preeminently  a  social  influence  of 
incalculable  power  and  worth.  This  two-fold  aspect  of  experi- 
ence applies  to  the  hopes  as  well  as  to  the  more  definite  dog- 
mas, rites,  ceremonies,  and  practices  of  religion.  Religious 
hopes  are  not  merely  individual,  but  appertain  also  to  the  com- 
munity of  believers.  Thus  in  a  broad  way  the  race's  expecta- 
tion of  a  better  future,  from  the  religious  point  of  view,  may 
be  said  to  be  the  social  aggregate  of  the  expectations  respecting 
the  future  of  individual  believers. 

The  different  religions  differ  greatly,  however,  in  regard  to 
their  interest  in,  and  their  hopes  for,  the  future  of  mankind. 
At  the  one  extreme  stand  such  beliefs  as  Brahmanism  and 
Buddhism  ;  at  the  other,  are  Judaism  and  Christianity.  The 
former  concentrate  the  endeavors  of  the  religious  life  upon  the 
individual's  obtaining  for  himself  that  relief  from  the  miseries 
of  a  changeful  existence  which  is  afforded  by  Nirvana.  It  is 
true  that  early  Buddhism  showed  an  almost  Christian  pity  for 
the  multitude  of  men ;  and  that,  in  the  spirit  of  this  pity,  it 
strove  to  point  out  to  the  multitude  the  way  of  a  salvation  in 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  551 

which  all  might  have  a  share.  But  Buddhistic  salvation  itself 
was  not  a  social  affair.  All  those  desires  and  affections  which 
go  out  toward  others  must  be  extinguished  as  the  indispensable 
condition,  on  the  part  of  the  individual,  of  his  realizing  its  hope 
of  salvation.  The  good  which  was  for  all,  was  as  far  as  possi- 
ble removed  from  being  a  supreme  social  good.  On  the 
contrary,  early  Judaism  held  out  to  the  individual  little  or  no 
hope  of  any  realized  good  in  the  future,  except  as  he  could  in 
imagination  continue  to  picture  for  the  eartlily  religious  com- 
munity an  era  of  prosperity  in  which  he  was  to  share.  The 
important  hope  was  Israel's  hope ;  the  future  belonged  to  the 
people  ; — but  to  the  people  as  continuing  to  live  in  their  descen- 
dants and  not  as  inclusive  of  the  faithful  dead.  When,  how- 
ever, the  hope  of  Judaism  for  the  future  burst  through  the 
gates  of  Hades,  it  retained  its  valuable  and  distinguishing  so- 
cial characteristics.  It  enlarged  its  own  heart  and  became  the 
hope  of  the  nations,  extending  through  time  and  over  both  the 
dead  and  the  living.  It  was  Christianity,  above  all  other  reli- 
gions, that  answered  for  the  individual  the  inquiry.  What  may 
I  hope  for?  in  the  name,  and  in  the  behalf,  of  all  mankind. 
Thus  it  alone  of  all  religions  combined  the  more  egoistic  ap- 
peals to  the  individual's  longing  for  an  immortal  life,  with  the 
more  altruistic  promises  of  the  fulfillment  of  the  most  exten- 
sive social  hope. 

Christianity  answers  the  question  of  hope  for  the  future  of 
the  race  with  a  conception  which  is  the  loftiest  and  grandest 
ever  framed  Ijy  the  human  mind.  This  conception  beai-s  the  title 
of  the  *'  Kingdom  of  God,"  or  the  "  Kingdom  of  Heaven  "  —  the 
realization  of  the  perfect  social  Ideal.  Christianity  received 
this  conception  from  Judaism,  in  whose  prophetic  and  poetical 
imagination  and  thought  it  had  l)een  developing  through  several 
tenturies  of  national  experience,  botli  joyful  and  distressing. 
P»ut  the  religion  of  Christ  did  something  far  nK)re  than  merely 
to  commend  and  hand  on  this  conception  in  unaltered  form. 
We   have  already  seen  that  its  Ideal  is  too  comprehensive  and 


552  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

lofty  to  be  identified  with  any  ecclesiastical  organization,  or 
even  with  the  conception  of  the  Christian  Church  Universal. 
The  latter  has  constantly,  on  the  one  hand,  to  guard  itself 
against  collective  tyranny  and,  on  the  other,  to  avoid  an  exces- 
sive individualism.  The  religious  community  must  have  its 
dogmatic  formulas,  its  modes  of  worship,  and  its  practical  rules 
that  are  enforceable  by  discipline  over  its  members.  But  the 
supreme  social  Ideal  which  offers  itself  to  the  hope  of  the  be- 
liever in  God  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  and  as  the  Redeemer  of 
mankind  by  a  complex  historical  process,  is  a  much  larger  and 
more  incorporeal  affair.  It  is  the  equivalent  in  its  reach  and 
in  its  perfect  realization,  to  the  refinement,  intensifying,  uni- 
versal extension,  and  perfect  sway,  of  spirituality  among  men. 
As  organized  and  visible  Christianity  has  repeatedly  proved 
itself  faithless  or  ineffectual  in  the  work  of  transforming  soci- 
ety in  accordance  with  this  social  Ideal,  there  has  been  a  return 
to  the  original  and  fundamentally  Christian  position.  This 
position  affirms  that  the  significance  of  the  work  of  Jesus  and 
his  followers  is  to  be  found  in  just  this  transforming  and  up- 
lifting spiritual  power  for  the  whole  race  of  men.  The  express 
design  of  the  religion  of  Christ  is  to  bring  the  spirit  of  man 
into  right  relations  of  faith,  love,  and  obedience,  with  the  Ab- 
solute Ethical  Spirit  who  is  man's  Father  and  Redeemer. 
Only  in  this  way  of  repeated  self -purification,  and  of  increas- 
ing reform,  does  the  Christian  Church  accomplish,  at  all  satis- 
factorily, its  great  mission  of  devotion  to  the  progressive  real- 
ization of  the  Kingdom  of  God  among  men. 

But  all  the  meanwhile,  the  uplifting  and  purifying  spiritual 
forces  which  exist  and  are  effective  in  other  religions,  and  in 
other  forms  than  the  definitely  religious  activities  of  man's 
developing  life,  are  tending  toward  the  same  supreme  Good. 
Science,  philosophy,  art,  and  industrial  and  commercial  as  well 
as  political  and  social  improvement,  furnish  forms  of  energy 
which  co-operate  with  religion  in  furthering  the  coming  of  the 
Kingdom   of   Heaven  to  mankind.     This  at  any  rate,  is  the 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  553 

answer  which  religion  itself  offers  to  the  question :  What 
may  I  hope  for  as  to  the  future  of  the  race  ? 

Merely  to  raise  the  question  of  the  ultimate  destiny  of  hu- 
manity, as  measured  by  its  prospective  approach  in  the  remotest 
future  of  its  existence  to  its  own  most  highly  developed  social 
Ideal,  implies  an  advance  in  race-culture  of  no  mean  degree. 
The  problem  of  the  future  of  the  race  is,  in  its  very  nature, 
not  one  to  concern  the  mind  of  the  savage  or  so-called  primitive 
man.  Yet  tribes  of  a  low  degree  of  culture  do  entertain  cer- 
tain beliefs  of  a  future  idealized  existence,  or  improved  destiny, 
for  their  own  members.  Such  an  ideal  has  also  been  developed 
repeatedly  in  a  semi-speculative  way  by  individual  thinkers  who 
represented  the  highest  expressions  of  the  culture  of  their  own 
age  ; — as,  for  example,  in  Plato's  "  Republic,"  Augustine's  "  City 
of  God,"  and  in  a  more  restricted  way,  in  the  admissions  and 
suggestions  of  the  latter  part  of  Kant's  '*  Critique  of  Judgment." 
But  the  one  most  distinguished  example  of  an  historical  evolu- 
tion of  this  social  Ideal,  under  the  influence  mainly  of  religious 
beliefs,  but  not  by  any  means  uninfluenced  by  collateral  con- 
siderations, is  the  biblical  conception  of  the  "  Kingdom  of  God." 
At  the  one  end  of  this  historical  evolution  we  are  invited  to  see 
how  the  conception  of  a  happy  and  prosperous  Israel  under 
the  rule  of  Yahweh  arose  ;  at  the  other  stands  the  picture  in 
the  Apocalypse  of  '*a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth,"  a  "  great 
city,  the  holy  Jerusalem,  descending  out  of  heaven  from  God," 
where  "  the  nations  of  them  which  are  saved  shall  walk  in  the 
light  of  it :  "  "  and  there  shall  be  no  more  curse  ;  but  the  throne 
of  God  and  of  the  Lamb  shall  be  in  it ;  and  his  servants  shall 
serve  him  :  and  they  shall  see  his  face,  and  his  name  shall  be 
in  their  foreheads." 

The  barest  attempt  to  criticise  this  conception  of  an  ideal 
social  future  for  mankind,  involves  tlie  investigation  of  an  in- 
conceivably vast  range  of  subordinate  in(|uiries  ;  and  it  requires 
ft  confidence  in  the  conclusions  of  specuhition  as  to  the  prol>- 
able  outcome  uf  tendencies  extending  over  vast  stretches  of 


554  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

time,  which  is  not  both  easily  and  wisely  to  be  attained.  Yet 
here  is  this  beautiful  dream  of  humanity,  which  the  convictions 
and  faiths  of  a  religion  of  redemption  undertake  to  convert 
into  a  rational  hope. 

In  support  of  this  hope,  which  is  the  somewhat  peculiar  gift 
of  Christian  faith  to  the  world,  no  appeal  can  indeed  be  made 
to  considerations  which  are  worthy  to  be  called  proofs,  much 
less  demonstrations  of  the  irresistible  kind.  And  yet  the  hope 
is  by  no  means  left  without  support.  Thus  the  reflective  mind 
may  come  either  confidently  to  believe  in,  or  at  least  to  indulge 
the  rational  expectation  of  a  realization  of  the  social  Ideal  in 
the  future  of  the  race.  The  considerations  which  lead  to  this 
faith,  this  hope,  may  be  said  to  be  of  two  kinds.  One  kind  is 
chiefly  collateral,  and  is  not  derived  from  definitely  religious 
beliefs  and  conceptions.  But  the  more  positive  and  convin- 
cing considerations  depend  upon  certain  fundamental  faiths  of 
religion. 

Neither  science  nor  philosophy  is  at  present  able  to  propose 
any  certain,  or  even  highly  probable,  solution  for  the  problem 
of  the  future  destiny  of  the  human  race.  Nor  does  it  seem 
likely  that  either  will  acquire  a  firm  grasp  upon  the  data  nec- 
essary for  such  a  solution,  for  a  long  time  to  come.  Both 
science  and  philosophy,  however,  create  expectations  which 
may  serve  even  now  to  modify  and  correct,  or  to  corroborate, 
those  faiths  and  hopes  respecting  the  future  of  humanity,  which 
the  developed  religious  consciousness  has  come  to  entertain. 
The  astronomical  and  physico-chemical  sciences  are  now  deal- 
ing largely  in  the  role  of  prediction  as  to  the  final  fate  of  the 
earthly  habitation  of  man.  On  the  whole,  it  cannot  be  said 
that  their  utterances  are  encouraging  to  the  literal  interpreta- 
tion of  the  apocalyptic  vision  of  a  "new  heaven  and  a  new 
earth,"  which  shall  be  wholly  free  from  those  physical  discom- 
forts and  restrictions  whose  effects  in  the  social  evolution  of 
mankind  are  now  quite  universally  held  to  have  been  so  indis- 
pensable.    The  advocate  of  the  possibility  of  a  realization  of 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  555 

this  vision  cannot  safely  forget  that  the  recognition  of  the  im- 
perative need  and  extreme  value  of  the  struggle  for  existence, 
with  its  immense  toll  of  hardship,  suffering,  and  death,  is  an 
important  part  of  that  theodicy  which  is  made  somehow  neces- 
sary in  order  to  place  the  religious  doctrine  of  the  Divine  Love 
and  of  the  reality  of  the  redemptive  process  upon  grounds  of 
fact  and  of  history.  On  the  other  hand,  these  sciences  may 
properly  be  reminded — a  thing  which  their  most  prudent  and 
learned  students  are  readiest  to  admit — that  they  really  hioio 
little  or  nothing  of  an  assured  scientific  character  about  even 
the  remotest  lylujucal  future  of  the  earth.  Indeed,  the  scepti- 
cal and  agnostic  attitude  toward  the  prophecies  of  astronomy, 
physics,  and  chemistry,  is  peculiarly  appropriate  just  at  present. 
For  all  the  most  assured  principles  of  these  sciences  are  under- 
going a  very  severe  testing  which  is  resulting  in  exceedingly 
rapid  and  diversified  revision.  Moreover,  if  the  most  pessimistic 
conclusions  were  indubitably  warranted  with  regard  to  the  fu- 
ture pliysical  condition  of  the  earth,  this  would  not  of  necessity 
settle  the  destiny  of  the  human  race  as  considered  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  religious  ideal.  In  the  expression  of  this 
ideal,  whether  for  the  individual  man  or  for  human  society,  the 
detailed  descriptions  of  those  most  gifted  with  insight  and 
firmest  in  faitli  and  hope,  are  confessedly  figurative  and  sym- 
bolic. How  far  the  actual  fulfillment  of  the  faith,  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  hope,  is  dependent  upon  the  continuance  of  the 
cosmic  system  in  substantially  its  present  form,  we  are  quite 
unable  to  say,  either  in  the  name  of  science,  religion  or  specu- 
lative philosophy.  We  simply  do  not  know.  And  physical 
science  does  not  know,  whether  this  cosmic  system  may  not 
retain  substiintiiilly  its  present  form  through  incalculable  icons 
yet  to  come.  On  the  other  hand,  when  phih)S()phy  and  theol- 
ogy begin  to  discourse  alK)ut  "eternity,"  in  tlie  strictest  tem- 
poral ap[>li(iation  of  the  word,  the  conceptions  of  both  are 
equally  misty,  negative,  and  unlit  for  discussion  in  terms  of 
knowledge  or  even  of  reasoned  opinion. 


556  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

The  predictions  of  biology  and  anthropology,  when  these 
sciences  attempt  to  extend  the  role  of  prophecy  to  the  end  of 
the  existence  of  the  human  race,  while  they  come  nearer  to 
our  daily  experiences  and  to  our  more  immediate  interests, 
cannot  be  said  to  have  any  truly  scientific  character.  And, 
indeed,  as  they  are  actually  made  by  the  students  of  these 
sciences,  they  are  indefinite  and  vacillating  in  a  high  degree. 
There  are  existent  in  man's  past  history  and  present  experience 
grounds  for  each  one  of  several  quite  different  opinions  as  to  what 
the  far-away  future  destiny  of  the  race  will  be.  One  of  these 
opinions  sees  the  inevitable  conditions  of  human  existence,  and 
of  the  multiplication  of  the  species,  slowly  but  irresistibly 
tending  to  increased  and  more  complicated  miseries,  and  to  a 
condition  of  arrested  development  followed  by  decay  and  death. 
In  the  natural  history  of  the  individual  man  this  opinion  reads 
the  future  history  of  the  race  of  men.  According  to  another 
sociological  theory  which  can  make  at  least  an  equally  trust- 
worthy appeal  to  certain  sides  of  experience,  the  time  will 
come  when  the  forces  that  favor  the  various  kinds  of  progress, 
and  those  forces  that  induce  retrogradation,  will  be  in  a  state 
of  equilibrium.  A  third  opinion  is  yet  more  frankly  and  joy- 
ously optimistic ;  and  they  who  are  blessed  with  the  ability  to 
hold  it  firmly  in  prospect  see  a  continual  advance  of  humanity 
— unlimited  by  time  and  bounded  only  by  the  geographical 
limits  of  the  habitable  globe — toward  the  realization  of  its 
economical  and  social  ideals.  Each  one  of  the  three  views, 
which  the  biological  and  anthropological  sciences  attempt  to 
place  upon  a  basis  of  recognized  facts,  has  had  its  counterpart 
in  the  religious  doctrine  of  the  future  of  the  race.  Religious 
pessimists  have  held  that  even  at  the  last  only  a  few  will  be 
saved  ;  and  these  few  will  be  translated  to  some  Paradise  apart, 
while  misery  and  death  eternal  will  be  the  fate  of  the  race  at 
large.  Others,  more  optimistically  inclined,  have  pictured  the 
social  salvation  which  is  in  the  end  to  come  to  the  great  ma- 
jority, if  not  to  all  of  the  race,  as  a  fortunate  condition,  either 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  557 

of  stable  equilibrium  or  of  ceaseless  and  indefinite  progress  in 
blessedness.  In  the  details  of  its  pictures  of  the  future,  his- 
torical Christianity  has  varied  all  the  way  from  the  grossest 
and  most  revolting  to  the  most  refined  and  spiritual  conceptions. 

If  these  forms  of  natural  science  contribute  little  either  to 
the  defense  or  to  the  refutation  of  the  hopes  of  religion  for 
the  future  of  humanity,  the  case  is  somewhat  more  illumining 
when  we  regard  the  indications  which  are  offered  by  the  past 
history  of  man's  spiritual  development,  as  to  the  probabilities 
of  his  future  development.  Here  the  notable  thing  is  the 
rising  of  the  Social  Ideal  in  the  consciousness  of  mankind, 
and  the  increasing  dissatisfaction  with  the  conditions  already 
attained  toward  the  realization  of  this  ideal.  No  other  social 
phenomenon  is  so  impressive  at  the  present  time  as  this  con- 
stiintly  rising  and  widespreading  restlessness  under  existing 
conditions  of  every  sort.  This  pervasive  spiritual  influence 
is  stirring  the  millions  of  Russia ;  and  the  more  numerous 
millions  of  the  Orient  are  awakening  as  from  centuries  of 
sleep.  The  interest  of  the  present  age  in  the  social  future  of 
the  race,  whether  its  life  is  to  be  continued  in  the  environment, 
physical  and  psychical,  of  an  earthly  existence,  or  amidst  other 
unimaginably  different  circumstances,  although  it  is  congenial 
to  the  spirit  of  the  religion  of  Christ,  is  a  comparatively  modern 
affair.  ^*  The  sense  of  duty  to  the  race,"  as  Rhys  Davids  has 
said,*  is  largely  a  result  of  the  ''continuity  of  human  progress." 

If  we  study  more  profoundly  this  social  unrest,  as  respects 
both  its  causes  and  its  significance  fur  the  future,  we  cannot 
fail  to  realize  several  important  respects  in  which  it  resembles 
the  Ixjlief  and  hopes  that  sustain  the  religious  doctrine  of  the 
coming,  in  an  historical  way,  of  the  kingdom  t)f  (fod  among 
men.  One  of  the  marked  points  of  resemblance  is  a  certain 
divinely  induced  possiinism.  With  all  the  advances  of  tho 
social  status,  whether  over  smaller  or  wider  areas  of  society, 
there  has  almost    uniformly  come  an  incre;ised  dissatisfaction 

1  Urigin  .'iml  (Jrowtli  of  Religion,  p.  111. 


558  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

with  the  advances  already  made.  The  ideal  end  seems  no 
nearer  than  before  ;  indeed,  the  ideal  has  risen  faster  than  man 
has  risen  in  his  progress  toward  its  realization.  Thus  the  cry 
of  the  reformer  who  is  intensely  interested  in  the  social  better- 
ment of  humanity,  whether  from  the  more  purely  social  or  the 
more  definitively  religious  point  of  view,  is  the  same  in  all 
periods  of  history  and  under  all  changes  of  race-culture.  He 
is  always  a  John  the  Baptist ;  and  his  cry  is  always  the  same : 
"  Repent  and  bring  forth  fruits  of  repentance  in  righteousness, 
for  the  end  is  pressing  but  is  not  yet  attained."  It  is  only  the 
final  and  far-away  look  of  either  sociology  or  religion  that  can 
be  thoroughly  optimistic.  Changes  of  governments  and  of 
other  forms  of  social  organization,  no  matter  how  much  of 
social  betterment  they  may  seem  to  carry  with  them,  never 
fully  satisfy  the  demands  for  reconstruction.  They  all  leave 
behind,  or  they  actually  produce,  a  more  intense  feeling  of  the 
schism  between  the  actual  and  the  Ideal,  between  what  is  and 
what  ought  to  be.  There  follows,  of  course,  a  yet  more  keen 
and  imperative  demand  for  further  progress. 

In  this  way  the  doctrine  of  social  betterment,  considered  as 
a  purely  natural  and  mechanical  process,  suggests  the  insuf- 
ficiency of  its  own  conception,  and  the  hopelessness  of  all  at- 
tempts that  are  governed  solely  by  this  conception.  The 
conception  itself  implies  a  process  of  the  conservation  and  sum- 
mation of  a  vast  number  of  spiritual  and  "  worth-having " 
energies,  co-operating  through  long  stretches  of  time  to  pro- 
duce a  common  valuable  result.  But  this  is  to  say  that  the 
conception  is  an  Ideal.  In  order  progressively  to  realize  such 
an  ideal  in  the  actual  experience  of  mankind,  confidence  must 
be  placed  in  some  discriminating  and  unifying  Force  which  is  at 
work  in  and  through  all  the  conflicting,  or  the  sympathetic  and 
mutually  assisting,  human  organizations.  This  force  we  may 
call  the  rising  Spirituality  of  the  race.  But  this  is  substantially 
what  religion  means  when  it  regards  its  own  mighty  social  up- 
lift of  humanity  as  the  work  of  God's  Spirit  in  advancing  the 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  659 

coming  of  God's  Kingdom  among  men.  From  this  point  of 
view  we  may  regard  the  restlessness  and  dissatisfaction  of  the 
present  age,  whose  imperative  demands  for  spiritual  gifts, 
spiritual  development,  and  spiritual  greatness,  seem  so  incon- 
sistent with  its  extravagant  estimate  of  the  worth  of  sensuous 
and  temporal  goods,  as  humanity's  unceasing  cry  to  God  for 
the  presence  and  work  of  his  Holy  Spirit  with  redeeming  power. 
The  cry  is  also  prophetic  of  the  confession  to  which  tliis  same 
age  will  soon  be  forced ;  for  the  social  Ideal  will  never  be 
reached,  or  even  successfully  followed,  except  by  means  of  a 
progressive  purification  and  transformation  of  finite  spirits  by 
the  onmipotent  Ethical  Spirit  of  God.  That  which  so-called 
sociology,  too  often  ignorantly,  worsliips  is  declared  by  religion 
to  be  the  Kingdom  of  God  that  is  ever  coming,  but  is  not  yet, 
among  the  children  of  men. 

No  breach  is  made,  then,  in  the  continuity  of  human  science 
when  we  turn  to  the  beliefs  of  religion  for  a  more  positive  sup- 
port to  our  hope  for  the  future  of  the  race.  As  for  the  indi- 
vidual's hope  of  immortal  life,  so  for  humanity's  hope  of  a  pro- 
gressive realization  of  the  social  ideal,  it  is  the  conception  of 
God  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  in  which  the  rational  grounds 
must,  if  at  all,  l^e  cliiefly  found.  This  conception  attributes  to 
the  Being  of  the  World,  to  the  Personal  Absolute,  the  titles  of 
the  loving  Father  and  Redeemer,  as  well  as  the  Creator  and 
Preserver  of  mankind.  Thus  there  is  seated  in  the  very  heart 
of  Reality  the  unchanging  ground,  as  a  conscious  final  purpose, 
of  the  progressive  realization  of  the  social  Ideal.  God  will 
see  to  it  that  liis  Kingdom  in  its  perfection  is  brought  to  actu- 
ality for  the  race.  Intimations  of  this  hope,  as  Uised  upon 
faith  in  the  mond  perfection  of  the  divine  purpose,  are  ex- 
pressed by  the  inspired  seers,  poets,  and  pliilosophere  of  all 
ages.  But  the  hope  itself  is  an  essential  deduction,  or  corollary, 
from  the  centnil  truths  and  niost  firmly  founded  faiths  of  the 
Christian   religion. 

When,  however,  this  hope  is  taken  before  the  facts  of  history 


560  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

and  of  present  experience,  and  its  validity  tested  by  estimating 
the  power  actually  inherent  in  Christianity  to  overcome  the 
enormous  obstacles  in  the  way  of  its  own  Ideal,  the  answer  is 
not  so  clear  and  confident  as  could  well  be  wished.  As  esti- 
mated by  the  tendencies  of  the  times,  the  redeeming  force  of 
the  religion  nominally  espoused  by  those  nations  which  are  at 
present  inherently  most  vigorous,  and  most  influential  in  mould- 
ing the  destiny  of  humanity,  seems  to  present  two  diverse,  if 
not  contradictory,  aspects.  On  the  one  side,  the  forces  which 
make  for  the  advancement  of  race-culture,  and  for  the  social 
progress  of  mankind,  appear  to  be  separating  themselves  more 
and  more  from  socially  organized  religion.  On  the  other  side, 
religion  itself  as  an  affair  of  the  human  spirit  seems  to  be  more 
and  more  friendly  to  every  other  important  influence  that  ad- 
vances this  culture  and  that  contributes  to  social  progress. 
The  observer  who  is  chiefly  influenced  by  one  set  of  appear- 
ances might  conclude  that  the  social  ideal  is  being  realized 
apart  from  the  active  participation  of  religion,  either  as  sub- 
jectively considered — a  filial  attitude  toward  God — or  as  a 
system  of  beliefs  and  a  form  of  social  organization.  But  on 
regarding  more  patiently  the  other  set  of  appearances,  he  might 
experience  the  encouraging  impression  that,  in  Christian  com- 
munities at  least,  all  the  forces  of  civilization  and  of  social 
progress  are  becoming,  if  less  obviously  and,  so  to  say,  tech- 
nically, still  more  truly  religious  than  ever  before. 

Upon  the  present  tendencies  to  divorce  science,  art,  business, 
politics,  and  all  other  forms  of  social  organization  except  the 
Church,  from  definite  connections  of  control  or  influence  from 
religion,  we  have  already  remarked  at  sufficient  length.  It  has 
been  made  sufficiently  clear  that  this  divorce,  if  it  could  be  ac- 
complished, would  not  result  in  the  lasting  benefit  of  any  of 
these  interrelated  forms  of  race-culture  and  of  social  progress. 
But  it  is  now  in  place  to  notice  that  religion  was  never  before 
so  cordial — not  to  say  complaisant — in  its  attitude  toward  all 
these  forms  of  human  interest,  as  it  is  in  the  so-called  Christian 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  561 

nations  of  to-day.  In  all  kinds  of  charitable  works,  and  of 
efforts  for  the  education,  increased  culture,  and  social  improve- 
ment of  the  multitudes,  the  believer  and  the  unbeliever,  the 
man  esteemed  a  saint  and  the  so-called  sinner,  are  more  than 
ever  before  standing  side  by  side  and  working  together  with  a 
common  will.  It  is  true  that  irreligious  and  immoral  ways  of 
acquiring  the  resources  which  are  dispensed  in  these  efforts  at 
promoting  the  social  ideal  are  tolerated  in  the  very  bosom  of 
the  Christian  churches.  Thus  religion  is  more  discredited  on 
the  side  of  the  acquisition,  than  it  is  credited  on  the  side  of 
tlie  disbursement,  of  the  good  things  provided  by  God  for  man. 
And  certain  grave  risks, — such  as  arise  from  remoteness  of 
personal  connection,  the  breeding  of  dependence,  of  laziness, 
and  of  professional  pauperism,  official  extravagance,  and  loss  of 
the  reactionary  beneficial  influence  over  the  giver, — encompass 
the  present  form  of  so-called  "  organized  charities."  Essentially 
the  same  thing  is  true  of  much  of  the  non-sectarian  and  non-re- 
ligious education,  of  the  practice  of  art,  and  the  pui-suit  of 
social  advantages  and  comforts,  without  regard  to  religious 
restraints,  which  is  characteristic  of  the  age.  Above  all  is  it 
becoming  palpably  felt  that  no  merely  economic  arrangements, 
or  legal  enactments,  or  civil  organizations,  which  leave  the 
Christian  principle  of  brotherly  love  out  of  their  working,  will 
avail  to  effect  the  desired  social  uplift  of  the  race.  Yet  this 
prevailing  spirit  of  co-operation  is  doing  much  to  resolve  antago- 
nisms and  to  unite  the  forces  of  all  kinds  that  make  for  man's 
betterment ;  it  is,  therefore,  most  divinely  significant  and  di- 
vinely promising  with  respect  to  the  progressive  realization  of 
the  religious  Ideal. 

The  modern  conception  of  an  ideal  Social  Democracy,  and 
all  that  this  conception  means  when  tiiken  at  its  highest  terms 
and  in  its  most  comprehensive  form,  is  the  product  of  Chris- 
tianity more  than  of  any  other  influence.  At  its  very  begin- 
ning this  religion  ])roke  away  from  the  old  tribal  notion,  which 
united  a  certain  group  of  men  under  tlie  social  principle :  **  Thy 

r>6 


562  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

god  is  my  god,"  because  "  thy  people  is  my  people."  But 
Christianity  became,  as  of  necessity,  a  Church  or  social  organ- 
ization ;  and  then,  instead  of  steadfastly  adhering  to  its  funda- 
mental idea  of  a  spiritual  unity  which  should  include  all 
redeemed  humanity,  it  gave  itself  a  variety  of  more  or  less 
rigid  constitutions  in  conjunction  with  the  locally  prevalent 
forms  of  the  social  organizations  of  family  and  of  state.  If, 
therefore,  we  cannot  quite  completely  condemn  (following  a 
modern  writer  on  apologetics)  all  state  churches  and  territorial 
ecclesiastical  systems  as  "heathenish,"  we  certainly  cannot 
consider  them  as  fit  to  represent  the  Christian  social  Ideal. 

Good  citizenship  is  an  essential  manifestation  of  all  truly 
religious  spirit ;  it  is  especially  so  of  the  Christian  life,  whose 
principle  of  brotherly  love  is  the  highest  and  mightiest  of  all 
forces  to  initiate  and  to  accomplish  political  and  social  reforms. 
But  here  it  is  necessary  to  clear  the  mind  of  certain  errors  as 
to  what  good  citizenship  really  is,  in  the  truly  Christian  sig- 
nificance of  the  phrase.  The  religious  ideal  has  no  tendency  to 
secure  the  support  of  the  existing  government  in  all  its  policy, 
whether  this  policy  be  in  accordance,  or  not,  with  the  present 
wishes  and  aims  of  the  multitude  of  the  people.  Neither  is  it 
patriotism,  as  that  word  is  too  frequently  employed.  For  the 
fact  remains  substantially  unchanged  among  the  modern  Chris- 
tian nations,  as  it  was  of  old  among  the  heathen  empires  : — 
they  are  governed  very  largely  by  selfish  and  hypocritical  men, 
and  their  behavior  toward  one  another  and  toward  the  weaker 
races  is  anything  but  pious  and  benevolent.  Indeed,  there  is 
no  more  awful  and  absurd  mockery  of  the  spirit  of  Christ  than 
to  call  these  governments  by  his  name.  Therefore  good  citizen- 
ship of  the  truly  religious  sort  is  sometimes  forced  into  passive 
compliance  with  what  can  neither  be  approved  nor  changed 
at  once ;  and  sometimes  it  is  active  resistance  and  steadfast 
refusal  to  conform  to  the  existing  regulations.  But  it  is  uni- 
formly an  active  co-operation,  according  to  the  individual's 
opportunity,  with  all  other  good   citizens  to  secure  a   more 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  563 

moral  and  truly  enlightened  government;  and  especially  to 
reform  the  abuses  existing  in  the  present  government.  And 
never,  under  any  circumstances,  does  fidelity  to  the  principles 
of  religion  allow  the  individual  to  fail  of  regarding  the  exhorta- 
tion, whatever  others  may  tliink  or  do,  "  to  keep  Idmaelf  un- 
spotted from  the  world." 

All  other  ways  of  realizing  the  social  Ideal  by  a  progressive 
betterment  of  liuman  conditions  are,  however,  secondary  and 
subordinate  when  regarded  from  the  more  definitely  religious 
point  of  view.  From  this  point  of  view,  the  supreme  good  for 
the  individual  is  that  immortal  life  whose  essence  is  a  union 
of  the  finite  spirit  with  the  Infinite  Holy  Spirit;  and  the  per- 
fection of  which  is  attained  through  the  continuance  of  this 
spiritual  union.  From  tlie  realization  of  this  ideal  in  an  in- 
creasing number  of  the  race  there  follows  of  necessity  the 
realization  of  the  social  Ideal.  For  as  has  been  already  said, 
the  Kincrdom  of  God  is  the  "  social  aoforregrate  "  of  all  the  re- 
deemed  ones  of  the  individuals  who  have  become  true  "  sons 
of  God."  Thus  Christianity  attempts  to  unite  the  hope  of  the 
future  after  death  of  the  individual  with  tlie  hope  of  the  future 
of  the  race.  Thus  would  it  bind  together  in  one  holy  society 
all  men  of  good-will,  quite  irrespective  of  the  time  at  which 
their  spirits  have  been  released  by  death  from  their  connection 
with  the  bodily  organism.  Here,  too,  liowever,  the  manner  of 
eflectiiig  this  social  unity  is  not  made  clear  to  religious  faith. 
From  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  it  is  probable  that  it  cannot 
be  made  clear.  The  expectiint  mind  is  invited  to  look  along 
two  lines  which  do  not  run  parallel,  but  whidi  cannot  Ix^  seen, 
but  (;an  only  Ixi  imagined,  somehow  to  converge  and  to  come 
toerether  at  the  Lust.  Lookiiif]^  iilon<'  one  line,  the  observer  is 
bidden  Lt)  bchuld  the  Christian  Church,  or  social  organization 
of  believei's,  universal  and  triumphant.  This  organization  is 
to  extend  itself  througli  all  tho  ages,  and  over  every  age,  tiil)e, 
people,  and  nation — until  all  the  earth  shall  know  the  Lord. 
Then  the  nice  is  bound  together  in  bonds  of  love  and  fniternal 


564  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

union ;  war  is  no  more ;  all  preventable  disease  and  death  are 
abolished ;  and  the  world  that  "  lay  in  the  Wicked  One,"  ac- 
cording to  the  early  Christian  conception  and  figure  of  speech, 
has  become  a  new  world,  an  ideal  social  community  of  re- 
deemed  ones.  But  looking  along  another  line,  he  is  bidden  to 
imagine  the  fulfilment  of  that  apocalyptic  vision  which  early 
Christianity  received  from  Judaism ;  and  which,  largely  by 
the  speculative  insight  and  skill  of  Paul,  was  made  for  cen- 
turies the  prevalent  belief  of  the  orthodox  Christian  Church. 
Christ  returns  to  earth  ;  the  dead  are  raised  ;  the  judgment  is 
made  final ;  and  the  union  of  all  the  sons  of  God  in  one  com^ 
munity  of  the  blessed  is  made  complete. 

The  extravagance  of  views  and  of  conduct  which  the  apoca- 
lyptic beliefs  of  early  Christianity  produced,  and  the  patent 
failure  of  the  subsequent  history  to  correspond  to  these  beliefs, 
brought  them  into  disfavor  with  the  more  reflective  thinking 
of  the  Christian  world.  A  similar  experience  has  been  repeated 
over  and  over  again  in  the  history  of  the  Christian  Church. 
At  whatever  cost  to  a  dogmatic  confidence  in  the  teachings  of 
the  New  Testament,  the  growing  indisposition  to  conceive  of 
tlie  future  of  humanity  after  the  precise  pattern  of  this  apoca- 
lyptic cannot  be  overlooked  or  easily  overcome.  The  great 
truths  that  the  righteous  dead,  and  the  righteous  among  the 
living,  are  to  be  considered  as  subjects  of  one  glorious  hope, 
as  members  of  one  Divine  society,  and  that  the  time  is  coming 
when  this  union  of  interest  and  of  life  shall  be  obvious,  are 
better  conserved  by  taking  them  out  of  their  more  definite, 
sensuous  and  symbolical  setting.  That  which  is  pictured  in 
temporal  and  cataclysmal  fashion  by  this  Apocalypse  may  then 
be  believed  in,  and  hoped  for,  as  a  good  that  is  ever  present, 
and  ever  accumulating  in  higher  and  higher  degrees  of  energy 
and  of  extension.  Thus  for  the  individual  believer  the  saying 
of  Jesus  becomes  the  more  impressive,  that  the  Kingdom  of 
God  is  within  him  ;  and  that  its  universalizing  is  the  very  proc- 
ess that  is  going  on  around  him,  in  which  he  is  bidden  to  take 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  565 

his  part.  And  although  neither  science  nor  private  experience 
have  served  to  penetrate  the  vail  which  separates  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Kingdom  on  this  side,  from  those  who  are  on  the 
other  side  of  death,  still  this  vail  is  to  Christian  faith  a  very 
thin  one.  And  to  that  one  larger  faith,  which  unites  the  indi- 
vidual's hope  of  immortality  with  humanity's  hope  of  its  social 
ideal,  this  vail  is  destined  ultimately  to  disappear  completely. 
The  light  which  science  and  pliilosophy  can  throw  along 
either  of  the  historic  lines  of  the  early  Christian  expectation 
for  the  future  is,  indeed,  dim  and  quite  insufficient  to  encour- 
age the  attempt  at  further  definition  and  argument  to  establish 
details.  There  remains,  however,  the  fact  of  the  hope  itself; 
religion,  in  the  highest  form  of  its  manifestation  of  faith  and 
hope  respecting  the  future  of  mankind,  expects  the  progressive 
realization  of  the  social  Ideal,  in  the  establishment,  by  an  his- 
torical process  of  redemption,  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  among 
men.  This  hope  reposes  in  the  faith  that  such  is  tlie  Good- 
Will  of  the  omnipotent,  omnipresent,  and  perfect  Ethical 
Spirit,  who  is  the  Fountain,  Guarantor,  and  Goal,  of  every  form 
of  good.  Of  a  share  in  this  hope  every  finite  spirit  who  shares 
in  the  good-will  of  this  Infinite  Spirit  is  invited  to  partake. 
Somehow,  and  at  some  time,  God  is  pledged  to  unite  all  his 
many  sons  in  a  common  life  that  shall  realize  the  conception 
which  the  experience  of  redemption  has  inspired,  but  which 
the  imagination  has  striven  in  vain  definitely  to  reproduce. 
Thus  the  j)romise  of  religion  for  the  future  remains  :  **  What 
eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  ear  heard,  neither  hath  entered  into 
the  heart  of  man  to  conceive,  God  hath  laid  up  for  them  that 
love  him."  And,  '*  forgetting  those  thinc^s  which  are  l)ehind, 
and  reaching  forth  unto  those  things  which  are  before,"  the 
effort  to  realize  this  promise  in  their  own  lives  and  influence 
is  the  practical  religion  of  all  the  true  sons  of  God. 


CHAPTER  XLVII 

SUIVEMARY  AND  COXCLUSION 

It  remains  only  to  gather  into  a  few  sentences  the  more 
obvious  and  important  trutlis  which  our  long  journey  of  ex- 
ploration may  be  said  fairly  to  have  established.  And  first 
among  them  is  the  profound  depth,  measureless  extent,  and 
sublime  height,  of  the  facts,  suggestions,  and  implicates  of 
the  religious  experience  of  humanit}^  Were  we  in  need  of 
another  picturesque  and  on  the  whole  truthful,  but  not 
strictly  scientific  definition  of  man,  we  might  be  tempted  to 
say  that  he  is  above  everything  else,  a  religious  aiiimal. 
For  a  faithful  and  full  description  of  the  sources,  aspects, 
and  j^roducts,  of  human  religious  experience  involves  all  those 
forms  of  functioning  in  their  most  extensive  and  intensive 
energy,  which  constitute  what  is  more  vaguely  connected 
by  any  such  term  as  a  "  human  nature."  In  the  development 
of  the  race,  therefore,  no  other  concourse  of  motives,  and  of 
guiding  psychical  and  spiritual  influences,  has  been  more  pro- 
ductive of  important  results,  than  that  which  may  be  fitly 
designated  as  Religion,  in  the  most  comprehensive  meaning 
of  this  term. 

To  point  out  the  same  essential  and  fateful  truth  as  seen 
from  a  slightly  different  path  of  approach:  Man  alone  is 
capable  of  conceiving  of  the  Being  of  the  World  as  an  invis- 
ible, spiritual  Power,  and  of  feeling  the  desire,  and  making 
the  effort  to  adjust  himself  to  this  power  and  to  secure  good- 
fellowship  with  it.  Since  this  way  of  conceiving  reality  is 
necessarily  anthropomorphic — i.  e.^  is  essentially  his  own  way, 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION  567 

is  man's  way — the  Divine  Being  is  imagined,  thought  of,  and 
treated,  as  though  it  were  self-like.  Bat  as  humanity  devel- 
ops, and  as  the  conception  of  what  it  is  to  be  a  Self  great- 
ens  and  rises  in  character,  in  accordance  with  the  progressive 
realization  of  a  larger  and  higher  Selfhood  in  human  history, 
the  mental  picture  of  the  Being  of  the  World  is  correspond- 
ingly changed.  In  the  greater  religions  of  humanity,  and 
above  all  in  the  highest  and  purest  types  of  Christian  belief, 
this  Ideal  of  religious  faith  and  worship  has  come  to  be  rep- 
resented by  the  conception  of  a  personal  Absolute,  who  is  at 
the  same  time  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  and  who  stands  in  re- 
lations to  humanity  that  are  fitly  symbolized  by  such  terms 
as  Father  and  Redeemer.  And,  indeed,  the  formation  of  this 
Ideal  is  the  crowning  achievement  of  man's  religious  expe- 
rience ;  it  has  actually  gathered  together  and  incorporated  into 
itself  all  the  supremest  efforts  of  reflective  thinking,  of 
purest  and  noblest  feeling,  and  of  the  practical  life  of  piety 
and  devotion,  on  the  part  of  the  religiously  best  of  the  race. 
This  Ideal  therefore,  appears  to  religious  experience,  to  be 
the  revelation  of  the  true  nature  of  the  Beingr  of  the  World 
as  made  in  and  through  the  "sons  of  God.''  Supreme  among 
these  sons  of  God  and  religious  leaders  and  revealei-s,  is 
Jesus  the  Clirist.  So  much  as  tliis,  together  with  all  the 
manifold  and  profound  influences  which  this  form  of  the  de- 
velopment of  man  has  exercised  upon  the  other  principal 
forms  of  his  development,  would  seem  to  be  properly  placed 
amongst  the  indubiU:ible  facts  of  human  history. 

But  at  once  must  we  remind  ourselves  that  such  an  Ideal  can- 
not 1)0  regarded  as  mere  vlea^  that  has  been  hatched  in  warmth 
of  sentiment  and  has  thus  nfrown  winirs  whicli  enable  it  to  rise 
above  the  realm  of  fact  and  reiison,  and  to  float  with  rhythmic 
and  Ix'autiful  motion  in  tlie  tliin  air  wlicre  science  and  even  phi- 
losophy lose  thfir  breath  and  fear  to  iuscend.  Against  a  similar 
conception  of  the  ideals  of  hr. inanity  in  general  we  nnist  once 
more  utter  our  most  emphatic  protest,  not  only  in  the  name  of 


568  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

history  and  psychology,  of  art,  ethics,  and  religion,  but  also  of 
science  and  philosophy  as  well.  None  of  man's  ideals — such 
as  abide  in  history,  because  they  spring  from,  and  are  nourished 
by,  the  most  permanent  and  fundamental  needs  and  aspirations 
of  human  nature — can  by  any  means  reasonably  be  treated  as 
purely  subjective,  as  so-called  mere  ideas.  On  the  contrary, 
they  all  have  a  most  well  assured  and  an  inexpressibly  precious 
ontological  value.  What  is  called  "science  " — in  the  hardest, 
narrowest,  and  if  you  please  most  bigoted  meaning  of  the 
word — cannot  afford  to  overlook  their  valuable  and  productive 
presence  even  in  the  midst  of  its  own  self.  For,  indeed,  there 
would  be  no  science,  in  any  tenable  meaning  of  the  word,  were 
it  not  for  the  impulsive  energy  and  moulding  force  of  the  ideal. 
And  the  so-called  scientific  conception  of  the  Being  of  the 
World,  especially  as  this  conception  has  framed  itself  in  the 
most  modern  times,  is  all  interfused  with  the  presence,  and 
dominated  by  the  power,  of  the  ideal.  Were  this  not  the  fact, 
this  conception  would  not  be  the  respectable  and  interesting 
theory,  explanatory  of  a  certain  limited  aspect  of  the  total  ex- 
perience of  humanity,  which  it  most  certainly  is.  But  to  argue 
that  philosophy  accepts  the  truth  of  the  ontological  value  of 
ideals  is  quite  unnecessary ;  for  this  is  the  assumption  which 
alone  makes  even  the  beginning  of  any  positive  form  of  philo- 
sophical opinion  to  be  a  possibility  for  the  reflective  thinker. 
In  this  treatise  we  have  been  interested  chiefly,  and  indeed 
exclusively,  in  affirming  and  testing  the  truth  that  a  candid 
examination  of  the  problems  of  the  philosophy  of  religion  es- 
tablishes yet  more  firmly,  upon  a  broad  basis  of  trustworthy 
and  unquestioned  facts  of  human  experience,  the  ontological 
value  of  man's  religious  ideals.  In  a  word,  this  form  of  the 
experience  of  humanity  is  just  as  entitled  to  judge  clearly  con- 
cerning the  real  nature  of  the  Ultimate  Reality,  the  invisible 
and  mysterious  Being  of  tlie  World,  as  are  the  various  forms 
of  the  positive,  physico-chemical  sciences.  There  are  no 
charges  of  unverified  conjecture,  extravagant  imaginings,  or 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION  569 

anthropomorphic  procedure,  which  science  can  hurl  at  religion 
in  the  field  of  belief  as  to  the  nature  of  this  Reality,  which  re- 
ligion cannot  return  with  equal  force  and  show  of  violence. 
For  religion,  too,  has  its  firm  foothold  over  a  vast  area  of  the 
most  indubitable  human  experiences.  And  if  there  are  many 
truths  about  all  things,  even  including  man's  soul,  to  which 
only  the  investigations  of  these  sciences  can  contribute,  there 
are  other  truths  concerning  the  same  things,  and  especially 
concerning  man's  soul,  about  which  religion  is  chiefly  entitled 
to  be  heard.  Science,  in  any  of  the  several  stricter  meanings 
of  that  word,  can  never  explain  all  experience.  Its  theory  of 
reality  is  always  one-sided,  partial,  and  in  certain  aspects  un- 
satisfying. Religious  beliefs,  religious  sentiments,  and  the 
practical  life  of  piety — these  are  actual  facts  of  a  limited  form 
of  experience.  But  they  are  also  integral  parts  of  that  total 
experience  which  science,  in  the  broadest  and  vaguest  meaning 
of  the  word,  and  philosophy  are  ever  striving  to  explain.  The 
Ideal  of  religion  is  therefore  rooted  in  actuality.  It  is  a  valid 
evidence  for  the  essential  nature  of  that  Reality  out  of  which 
its  own  nature  is  a  never-ce^ising  growth.  Indeed,  above  all 
other  ideals  do  those  of  religion  incorporate  themselves  into 
the  actualities  of  man's  life,  in  an  abiding,  influential,  and  in- 
destructible way. 

The  religious  conception  of  the  Being  of  the  World,  when 
taken  at  its  best  estate  and  in  the  form  of  its  supreme  develop- 
ment, and  after  being  subjected  to  critical  testing  in  the  light 
of  the  allied  conceptions  of  science  and  philosophy,  is  indeed, 
of  the  very  highest  evidential  value.  This  conception  is,  of 
course,  subject  to  continuous  development,  always  in  need  of 
reconstruction,  of  improved  construction.  There  are  many  un- 
solved problems  still  latent  or  obvious  within  its  content ; 
there  are  many  differences  as  to  tlie  expression  of  its  details  or 
even  of  its  more  important  characteristics  ;  there  is  the  envelop- 
ing mist  of  the  incompieluMisil)le  antl  the  inexpressible  ; — all 
this,  and  more,  to  perplex  us  in  the  religious  Ideal  of  God  as 


570  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

absolute  and  perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  But  such  defects  belong 
in  an  inevitable  way  to  ideals  in  general  ;  and  especially  to 
that  Ideal  which,  whether  primarily  assuming  the  scientific  or 
the  philosophical  or  the  religious  point  of  view,  aims  to  compre- 
hend within  itself  the  entire  system  of  experienced  realities,  in 
the  form  of  one  explanatory  principle  that  shall  satisfy  best 
the  intellectual,  affective,  and  practical  needs  of  human  life. 
Neither  in  the  name  of  science  nor  in  that  of  philosophy  can 
the  finite  mind  escape  these  defects.  But  neither  in  religion, 
nor  in  science,  nor  in  philosophy,  does  their  presence  warrant 
us  in  indulging  either  in  dogmatic  agnosticism,  or  indifference, 
or  despair.  All  human  truth  is  approximate,  subject  to  re- 
examination and  restatement,  interfused  with  the  mysterious 
and  as  yet  uncognizable.  If,  however,  our  knowledge  has  been 
advanced  by  the  foregoing  critical  investigation  somewhat 
further  toward  the  clearer  light,  and  our  faith  in  the  greater 
verities  of  religious  experience  has  been  somewhat  strength- 
ened and  made  more  rational,  the  long  labor  of  the  investiga- 
tion has  been  by  no  means  without  its  sufficient  reward. 

And,  finally,  we  should  be  glad  to  have  it  understood  that 
the  result  of  the  investigation  corresponds  to  the  spirit  in  which 
it  was  begun,  and  in  which  it  has  been  conducted  throughout. 
This  is  constructive,  irenic,  conciliatory ;  and  wherever  it  has 
seemed  to  be  for  the  moment  destructive,  polemical,  or  antag- 
onizing, the  change  has  been  merely  seeming  and  necessitated  by 
the  momentary  exigencies  of  the  discussion.  Science,  philoso- 
phy, and  religion,  all  have  their  own  peculiar  theories  of  reality, 
their  own  more  proper  conceptions  of  the  Being  of  the  World. 
To  science  the  sum-total  of  experienced  realities  seems  best 
conceived  of  as  an  orderly,  law-abiding,  self-evolving,  mechani- 
cal system.  To  philosophy,  with  its  profounder  insights  and 
more  far-reaching  critical  analysis,  this  same  totality  appears 
as  the  expression  of  a  Unitaiy  Being,  that  is  absolute  Will, 
functioning  teleologically  as  omnipresent,  immanent  Idea. 
But  religion  conceives  of  the  ground  of  its  experience  in  a 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION  571 

way  to  satisfy  more  immediately  and  perfectly  certain  aestlieti- 
cal  and  ethical  cravings  and  certain  demands  for  support  to 
exigencies  of  the  practical  life.  As  its  thought  becomes  more 
comprehensive  and  deeply  reflective,  it  frames  the  conception 
of  God,  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  the  Object  of  faith,  of  wor- 
ship, and  of  service. 

The  World,  however,  is  One  and  man  is  one.  Therefore  the 
steady  pressure  of  the  demands  for  some  theory  of  reality  that 
shall  take  fuller  account  of  the  different  aspects  of  this  cosmo- 
logical  Unity,  and  that  shall  appeal  to  the  total  experience^  in 
a  harmonizing  way,  of  this  psycliological  and  anthropological 
unity,  can  never  be  long  resisted.  Science  and  religion,  and 
philosophy  and  religion,  cannot  long  refuse  to  tiike  account  of 
each  other's  truths.  They  are  all  aiming  at  the  One  Truth ; 
and  this  one  truth  must  base  itself  upon,  and  be  understood  in 
the  light  of,  the  t(;tality  of  human  experience.  Inasmuch, 
however,  as  only  a  prolonged  study  of  history  and  of  psychology 
can  tell  us  what  the  so-called  religious  experience  actually  is, 
and  inasmuch  as  only  the  critical,  reflective,  and  speculatively 
constructive  method  of  thought  can  fruitfully  avail  itself  of  the 
data  furnished  by  this  study,  the  Philosophy  of  Religion  is  the 
only  arbiter  and  reconciler  of  all  strife  in  this  domain.  But 
the  very  data  are  never  all  given  ;  the  exploration  of  those 
which  belong  to  the  past  is  scarcely  as  yet  more  than  well  be- 
gun. Moreover,  the  powers  and  achievements  of  reflective 
thouglit  are  taxed  to  their  utmost,  and  very  speedily  tran- 
scended, when  employed  upon  the  piofounder  problems  and 
liii-ger  thoughts  of  the  religious  life  and  development  of  human- 
ity. Rrligion  itself  is  an  ever-developing  cxi)erience.  Its 
Objtict  of  faith  is  essentially  an  ever-expanding  Ideal  Ktcil. 
Therefore  any  attempt  to  treat  the  truths  of  the  religious  ex- 
perience of  humanity  by  the  mi'tliod  of  philosophy  can  only 
tcrminatt;  in  a  still  imperfect  condition  of  knowledge,  althougli 
in  an  iiupruved  conilition  of  rational  faith. 


INDEX 


AB,  Egjrptian  doctrine  of,  II,  495  f. 
Abb^  de  Broglie,  I,  45,  72,  II,  275 
Absolute,  the,  Xeo- Platonic  views  of, 

I,  6;  as  Self,  I,  253  f.,  263  f.,  333  f., 
344  f.,    347  f.,   359,   493  f.,    605  f., 

II,  13  f.,  81  f.,  94  f.,  117  f.,  139  f., 
147  f.,  217  f.,  259  f.,  282,  345  f., 
449  f.;  as  indetermined  conception, 

I,  267  f.,  615,  II,  111  f.,  117  f.,  222 
f.,  269  f.,  347. 

Absoluteness,  of  religion,  I,  71  f.,  II, 
467  f.;  of  God,  I,  431,  II,  107-121, 
348  f. 

Acquoy,  Prof.,  I,  5  f. 

Adi-Buddha,  as  Creator,  II,   321. 

Agni,  worship  of,  I,  175,  183. 

Agnosticism,  in  religion,  I,  24,  II, 
15,  20,  23  f.,  238  f.;  arguments 
against,  II,  239  f.;  both  religious 
and  anti-religious,  II,  239  f. 

Agriculture,  connection  of,  with  re- 
ligion, I,  392  f. 

Ahura-Mazda,     I,     184,     199,     246, 

II,  166,  321,  355,  391. 
Akbar,  I,  7,  10. 
Akiba,    Kabbi,    I,   475. 
.\l-.\.sh'   An,    I,   5S2. 

Algonkins,  worship  of  manito,  I,  101. 
Allah,  conception  of,  I,  200  f.,  400, 

II,  129,   132,   135,  358. 
Al-Uzza,  I,  201. 
Amulganwition,  naturo  of,  in  religion, 

I,  KWif.,   191  f. 
Amon-Kji  (.moo  Ha,  the  god). 
Ananda,   II,  499  f. 
Ancestor-worship,   in  China.   I,    14S, 

171  f.,    2(W,    II,    7  f.,    49S;   Japan, 

I,    149,    403,    571,    II,    7f.;    and 


Babylonia,  I,  170;  among  the 
Hindus,  I,  171;  of  the  dead,  II, 
479,  484  f. 

Ani,  Maxims  of,  I,  532. 

Animals,  as  worshipped,  I,  97  f., 
101  f.    (see  also,  Theriolatry). 

Animism,  nature  of,  I,  89,  90  f. 
(note),  101  f.,  385. 

Anselm,  his  argument  for  the  Being 
of  God,  II,  46. 

Anthropology,  relation  of,  to  philoso- 
phy of  religion,  I,  12  f.,  31  f.,  110  f.; 
on  primitive  man,  I,  135  f. 

Anthropomorphism,  necessary  to  re- 
ligion, I,  321  f.,  347  f.,  352  f., 
II,  41  f.,  92  f.,  241  f.,  566  f. 

Apocalyptic,  of  Buddha,  I,  577  f., 
II,  499  f.;  the  Persian,  II,  390  f.; 
of  later  Judai.sm,  II,  508  f.,  512  f., 
547;  the  Christian,  II,  .509  f.,  511  f., 
513  f.,  547  f.,  553,  564  f. 

Apollo,    I,   280,   465. 

Apollonius,  I,  437. 

Apologists,  the  Christian,  I,  431  f., 
II,  283,  425  f. 

A(|uina.s,  his  conception  of  miracle, 
II,   435. 

Arabia,  its  worship  of  trees  and 
stones,  I,  102  f.,  155;  natural 
characteri'stics  of,  I,  165  f.;  bloody 
sacrifices  of,  I,  525. 

-Vricia,  Frazer  on  priest  of,  I,  3^1  f., 
ISK  (note). 

.Vri.stidos,  .\polopj'  of,  II,  283. 

.Aristotle,  on  conception  of  Deity,  I, 
317,  II,  53, 5.5;  nature  of  justice,  II, 
ISO,  185;  on  love  of  the  gods,  II, 
190. 


574 


INDEX 


Arnold,  Matthew,  I,  348,  II,  275. 
Art,  relation  of,  to  religion.  I,  435  f., 

437  f.,   447  f.;   of   Egypt,   I,   447; 

and  Babylonia,  I,  447. 
Aryans,  primitive  religion  of,  I,  34, 

58,   221  f.,  II,  6  f. 
Ashera,  I,  521. 
Asoka,  King,  I,  54,  117. 
Atheism,  position  of,  II,  237  f.,  244  f. 
Athenagoras,  II,  328. 
Atman,  conception  of,  I,   107,  326, 

354,  II,  17  f.,  167  f.,  262,  280,  323, 

489  f.,  493,  535. 
Augustine,   on   "two-fold  truth,"  I, 

56  (note);  nature  of  Christianity, 

I,  70,  127,  553;  mysticism  of,  I, 
344;   on   doctrine   of   the  Church, 

II,  401;  his  conception  of  miracle, 
II,  435. 

Aurora,  worship  of,  I,  291. 
Australia,    religion    of   tribes   of,    I, 

122  f.,  225  f.,  II,  315,  316;  tribes 

of,  as  primitive,  I,  136. 
Awonawilona,  the  god,  II,  315  f. 
Aztecs,  religion  of,  II,  7  (see  Mexico 

and  Peru). 

Babism,  I,   167. 

Babylonia  (and  Assyria),  religion  of, 

I,  105,  287,  396,  399,  518  f.,  524, 

II,  318,  358;  incantations  of,  I, 
517  f.;  sacrifices  of,  I,  524;  cos- 
mogony of,  II,  318  f.;  belief  of,  in 
existence  after  death,  II,  498  f. 

Bacon,  on  proof  for  God,  I,  55. 

Barton,  on  primitive  Semitic  com- 
munity, I,  166,  176  f.  (note),  571; 
on  the  conception  of  Allah,  1,  201. 

Being  of  the  World,  conceived  of  as 
spiritual  Entity,  I,  108  f.,  Ill  f., 
234,  351  f.,  614  f.,  II,  331  f.,  537  f., 
546  f.,  568  f.;  and  Universal  Prin- 
ciple, 1, 114  f.,  614  f.,  II,  9  f.,  331  f., 
537  f.;  as  Ideal-Real,  I,  114  f., 
331  f.,  351  f.,  614  f.,  II,  568  f., 
570  f. 

Ben  Dosa,  I,  208. 


Ben  Zakkai,  I,  208. 

Bhagavadgita,  I,  294,  545,  II,  233  £., 
324. 

Bhuts,  worship  of,  I,  58. 

Bonhomie,  as  religious  feeling,  I,  292. 

Book  of  the  Dead,  I,  179,  II,  204, 
496  f. 

Book  of  the  Great  Decease,  II,  202. 

Bosanquet,  on  Christian  art,  I,  209 
(note),  408,  441  f.,  445  (note), 
450. 

Bousset  on  later  Judaism,  I,  209, 
407,  475,  501,  II,  507;  on  PhUo,  I, 
501,  II,  27  f.,  191. 

Bradley,  Mr.,  I,  271,  II,  259  f. 

Brahma  (neuter),  I,  222,  439,  II,  86, 
172,  252. 

Brahma  (personal),  I,  316,  401,  II, 
324. 

Brahma-Atma,  I,  222. 

Brahmanas,  the,  I,  543  f . 

Brahmanism,  as  a  religion,  I,  108, 
197,  380  f.,  401,  427,  461  f.,  543  f.; 
its  doctrine  of  the  World-Soul,  I, 
197,  363,  II,  108,  167  f.;  as  post- 
Vedic  Pantheism,  I,  380  f.;  ethics 
of,  I,  461  f.,  543  f.;  doctrine  of 
salvation,  I,  543  f.,  II,  168  f.; 
higher  morality  of,  II,  202. 

Brinton,  origin  of  religion,  I,  281, 
292,  418  (note),  II,  413;  nature 
of  religious  sentiment,  I,  292 
(note),  II,  210;  difference  between 
science  and  religion,  I,  418  (note); 
power  of  the  word,  I,  513;  con- 
ception of  Deity,  II,  123. 

Brown,  Prof.  Wm.  A.,  on  essential 
Christianity,  II,  478. 

Bruchmann,  K.,  I,  21   (note). 

Buddha,  the,  nature  of  his  salvation, 

I,  197  f.,  547  f.,  II,  499  f.;  "Book 
of  the  Decease"  of,  I,  547  f.,  576  f., 

II,  499  f.;  founder  of  a  religious 
community,  I,  575  f.;  "Apoc- 
alypse" of,  I,  577  f.,  II,  499  f.; 
death   of,    II,   499  f. 

Buddha-tathata,  II,  253   (note). 


INDEX 


575 


Buddhism,  as  religion,  I,  106  f., 
130  f.,  195  f.,  197,  427,  472,  491  f., 
522,  II,  18  f.,  168  f.,  255,  550  f.; 
its  power  of  amalgamation,  I,  107, 
195  f.,  578  f.;  and  claim  to  univer- 
sality, I,  130  f.,  II,  473  f.;  develop- 
ment of,  I,  197  f.,  578  f.,  II,  393, 
476  f.;  as  moral  reform,  I,  106, 
472  f.,  491  f.,  546,  II,  202;  its 
alleged  lack  of  a  creed,  I,  491  f.; 
its  cult  of  prayer,  I,  522;  and 
doctrine  of  salvation,  I,  546  f., 
II,  168  f.,  392  f.,  551;  and  of  exis- 
tence, II,  49  f.,  483  f.;  of  moral  evil, 
II,  168  f.;  belief  of,  in  the  future, 
II,  483  f . ;  on  nature  of  the  soul, 
II,  489  f. 

Bundehesh,   II,   165. 

Bunsen,   Baron,  I,  48. 

Bumouf,  I,  12  (note),  42  (note), 
151. 

Bushmen,  shyness  of,  in  religious 
matters,  I,  122  f.;  their  views  of 
creation,  II,  315. 

Busse,  Dr.,  II,  280. 

Cairo,  Principal,  on  the  ontological 
proof,  II,  49. 

Caldecott,  II,  11. 

Gallery,  M.,  I,  515. 

Carlyle,  I,  109  f. 

Carlyle,  Rev.  A.  J.,  I,  .5.59. 

Carus,   Dr.,  on  Christianity,  I,  255. 

Castr^n,  M.,  I,  96,  265,  405. 

Chabas,  M.,  I,  463. 

Chamberlain,  Prof.,  on  Kojiki,  II, 
201. 

Charles,  R.  II.,  on  Hebrew  view  of 
the  under-world,  II,  501  f.;  on 
eschatology  of  Judaism,  II,  .'iOO, 
514;  and  of  Paul,  II,  513  (note). 

China,  religion  of,  1,  94,  98,  104,  148, 
15(),  161,  171  f.,  194  f.,  2as  f.,  3.S4, 
103,  rrW,  II,  144  (note),  321  f.; 
idol-wonship  in,  I,  156;  relifrious 
literature  of,  I,  46-1  f.;  cosmogony 
of,  II,  322  f. 


Christianity,  an  historical  religion,  I, 
63  f.,  204  f.,  II,  404  f.,  407  f.;  a 
world-religion,  I,  64  f.,  70  f.,  407  f., 
II,  407  f.,  455  f.,  468  f.,  471  f., 
474  f . ;  its  claims  to  absoluteness, 

I,  71  f.,  113  f.,  II,  468  f.,  471  f., 
474  f.,  477  f.;  as  doctrine  of  su- 
preme good,  I,  82,  209  f.,  283  f., 
476,  II,  396  f.,  470;  and  univer- 
sality, I,  1.30  f.,  295  f.,  II,  407  f., 
455  f.,  468  f.,  471  f.,  474  f.;  rela- 
tions to  Judaism,  I,  204  f.,  209  f., 
295  f.,  407  f.,  474,  500,  529,  II,  187; 
and  to  Neo-Platonism,  I,  213;  its 
conception  of  God,  I,  247,  296  f., 
409  f.,  476,  501  f.,  529  f.,  II,  7  f., 
187  f.,  206  f.,  359  f.,  470;  and  in- 
fluence on  development,  I,  407  f., 
428  f.,  449  f.;  its  Clan,  I,  475  f.;  as 
faith  in  Christ,  I,  501  f.;  its  spirit 
and  form  of  worship,  I,  529  f.;  and 
way  of  salvation,  I,  552  f.,  II, 
396  f.;  as  the  "religion  of  Christ," 

II,  187  f.,  400  f.;  and  doctrine  of 
redemption,  II,  402  f.;  as  a  special 
Revelation,    II,    425  f.,   427  f. 

Church,  the  Christian,  early  attitude 
to  art,  I,  450  f . ;  its  moral  code,  I, 
476  f.,  587  f.;  and  dogmatic  devel- 
opment, I,  505  f.,  587  f.,  589  f., 
II,  458  f.;  its  social  character,  I, 
572,  587  f.  (note),  II,  4.57  f.;  and 
organization,  I,  588  f.,  II,  457  f.; 
as  guardian  of  the  faith,  II,  458  f. 

Cicero,  I,  57,  429. 

Civilization,  relation  of,  to  religion, 
I,  215,  II,  158,  4.59  f.;  present 
characteri.stics  of,  II,  459  f. 

Clarke,  R.  F.,  II,  63. 

Clement  of  .\le\andria,  I,  48. 

Commmiity.  the  rcliiriou.s,  formation 
of,  a  iiocc^sity.  I,  .564  f.,  568  f., 
.591  f.;  as  a  "Church,"  I,  569  f.;  in 
Babylonia,  I,  .573  f.;  the  Hindu,  I, 
574  f.;  the  Budilhistic,  I,  576  f., 
.57S  f.;  the  Muslim,  I,  581  f.,  583  f.; 
the  Jewish,  I,  584  f. 


576 


INDEX 


Comparative  Religion,  its  nature,  I, 
7f.,  18  f.,  31  f.;  effects  of  travel 
on,  I,  9  f.;  recent  advances  in,  I, 
31  f.,  124  f.;  limitations  of,  I,  32  f., 
34  f. 

Confucianism,  its  ethics,  I,  171  f., 
II,  183;  as  religion,  I,  193  f.,  195, 
II,  497;  in  Japan,  I,  195. 

Confucius,  his  teaching  as  to  ancestor- 
worship,  I,  268,  II,  497;  as  to 
knowledge,  II,  25;  use  of  term 
''Heaven,"  II,   78,   183,  429. 

Consciousness,  the  religious,  I,  36  f., 
51  f.,  112,  137  f.,  261  f.,  269  f., 
274  f.,  299  f.,  346  f.,  II,  30  f.;  of 
sin,  I,  60,  471,  528;  awakening  of, 
I,  138  f.,  374  f.;  analysis  of,  I,  261- 
277;  curiosity  as  spring  of,  I,  300; 
rational  elements  in,  I,  303  f.; 
necessarily  anthropomorphic,  I, 
321 ;  influences  of  environment  on, 
I,  374  f.;  the  so-called  "God  con- 
sciousness,"  II,   31  f. 

Cooke,  Prof.  J.  P.,  I,  417  f. 

Corban,  nature  of,  I,  325. 

Creation,  theistic  doctrine  of,  II, 
223  f.,  226  f.,  313  f.,  317  f.,  319  f., 
326  f.;  creatio  ex  nihilo,  II,  317  f. 

Creation  Epic,   II,   318  f. 

Creator  gods,  early  views  regard- 
ing, I,  225  f.,  346,  II,  314  f.,  317. 

Creeds,  absence  of,  among  early  re- 
ligions, I,  490  f. 

Criticism,  Kantian,  the,  I,  303  f.,  309. 

Crooke,  W.,  on  folk-lore  in  India,  I, 
67,  79  f.,  141. 

Crozier,  I,  70,  256  (note),  373  f.,  476. 

Cult,  the  religious,  forms  of,  I,  512  f., 
516  f.,  520  f.;  among  the  Romans, 
I,  517,  II,  416;  motives  of,  I,  520  f., 
523  f.;  the  Hebrews,  I,  524  f. 

D'Alviella,  on  nature  of  religion, 
1, 115, 126, 154,  4.56;  on  palaeolithic 
man,  I,  126  (note),  240;  growth  of 
personality,  I,  243;  on  conception 
of  God,  I,  364  f.,  II,  52,  68,  182, 


389;  religion  and  morality,  I,  456  f., 
II,  175;  on  belief  in  existence  after 
death,  II,  480. 

Danziger,  I,  207. 

Darmstetter,  I,  199. 

Darwin,  on  religious  devotion,  I,  514; 
argument  from  design,  II,  55. 

Davids,  Rhys,  on  science  of  religion, 
I,  10,  239;  ori  doctrine  of  Buddha, 
I,  197,  547  f.,  575,  576  f.;  and 
order  of  development  in  religion, 
I,  239;  on  the  Brahmanas,  I,  543  f.; 
and  transmigration,  II,  492  (note); 
on  future  progress,  II,  557. 

Dead,  the,  worship  of,  I,  170  f.,  184 
(note),  268  f.,  II,  479,  488  f.;  belief 
in  continued  existence  of,  II, 
479  f.,  488  f. 

De  Groot,  on  religious  system  of 
China,  I,  94;  on  fetishism,  I,  98. 

Deism,  its  theory  of  origin  of  religion, 
I,  141  f.,  II,  53  f.;  among  savages, 
I,  153  (note). 

Demeter-Ceres,  I,  280,  392  f. 

Demons,  early  Christian  belief  in,  I, 
432  f.,  II,  170,  388;  Plutarch  on 
the,  II,  42  f.,  387. 

Descartes,  on  argument  for  Being  of 
God,  II,  46  f. 

Design,  in  nature,  II,  54  f.,  59;  ar- 
gument for  God,  from,  II,  55,  58  f., 
77  f.,   103  f. 

Determinism,  influence  of,  I,  336  f. 

Deussen,  I,  10,  118,  II,  167. 

Development,  conception  of,  a  neces- 
sity, I,  26  f.,  69  f.,  85,  II,  154  f., 
335  f . ;  as  distinguished  from  dif- 
ferentiation, I,  159  f.,  166  f.,  168, 
187  f.;  theory  of,  as  applied  to 
religion,  I,  203-258;  forces  at  work 
in,  I,  176  f.,  203  f.,  214  f.,  218  f., 
229  f.,  II,  154  f.;  order  of,  I,  236  f., 
247  f.;  laws  of,  I,  247  f. 

Devil-worship,  I,  156,  164,  167,  233, 
578. 

Dharma,  conception  of,  I,  235,  II, 
183. 


INDEX 


577 


Dhatar,  II,  319. 

Diana,  origin  of  worship  of,  I,  188. 

Di  Indigetes,  I,  178  f.,  186. 

Di  Novensides,  I,   186. 

Divi  famidi,    I,     186. 

Divine  Being,  importance  of  con- 
ception of,  I,  59  f.,  76  f.,  309  f., 
431  f.,  II,  of.,  7  f.;  developed  con- 
ception of,  I,  113,  130  f.,  322  f., 
353  f.,  431  f.,  494  f.;  as  a  unity, 
I,  175,  322  f.,  381  f.,  II,  213  f.;  as 
Universal  Life,  I,  190,  376  f.,  438  f., 
444  f.,  II,  213f. ;  pantheistic  ideal 
of,  I,  438  f.,  II,  178,  252  f.,  258  f.; 
perfection  of  the,  II,  213  f. 

Djinns,  I,   102   (and  note). 

Dogma,  the  religious,  I,  487  f.,  490, 
495  f.,  503  f.,  506;  importance  of, 

I,  503  f. 
Dorman,  II,  355. 

Domer,  A.,  on  nature  of  religion,  I, 
118,  274,  493,  510,  539  (note);  on 
Protestantism,  I,  213;  on  religious 
faith,  I,  496,  510;  and  reality  of  the 
Ego,  II,  341. 

Domer,  J.  A.,  nature  of  revelation, 

II,  421. 

Dravidians,  religion   of   the,   I,    169, 

170  f. 
Dualism,  on  moral  grounds,  II,  165  f. 
Diihring,  I,  116. 
Durga,  worship  of,  I,  96. 

Earth,  worship  of,  I,  175,  294  f., 
392  f. 

Egypt,  Religion  of,  material  for 
study,  I,  33;  character  of,  I,  52, 
149,  181  f.,  220  f.,  224,  365,  392, 
463  f.,  .537;  II,  204,  213,  3.S7,  494  f.; 
morality  of,  I,  463,  II,  204;  gods 
of,  II,  213,  3.S7;  l^clicf  in  existence 
after  death,  II,  494  f. 

Emerson,  I,  .')5  f.,  510. 

En-lil,  the  god,  I,  16S. 

EpictotuH,  his  conception  of  God, 
I,  467,  474  f.,  476,  II,  191;  and  of 
the  problem  of  evil,  II,  172. 


Epistemology,  assumptions  of,  I, 
23  f . ;  relations  to  philosophy  of 
religion,    I,    23  f.,   44  f. 

Erman,  on  religions  of  Egypt,  I, 
181  f.,  529,  537,  II,  494. 

Eskimos,  religion  of,  I,  100,  227. 

Etruscans,  religion  of,  I,  111. 

Eucken,  on  religious  truth,  I,  56,  81 
(note),  86,  217,  425,  II,  156,  390, 
456;  on  irreligious  culture,  I,  217, 
II,  456;  and  virtues  of  the  an- 
cients, I,  340  f.;  on  problem  of 
e\nl,  II,  156,  169. 

Everett,  Prof.  C.  C,  I,  270,  342. 

Evil,  the  problem  of,  II,  148  f.,  156  f., 
160  f.,  193  f.;  principal  kinds  of, 
II,  148;  of  suffering,  II,  149  f.;  and 
of  sin,  II,  152  f.;  "medicinal 
theory"  of,  II,  156  f.;  as  a  theodicy, 
II,  1.58  f.;  193  f.;  polytheistic  view 
of,  II,  163  f. 

Evolution,  theories  of,  II,  290  f., 
330  f . ;  conflict  of,  with  Theism, 
II,  292  f.,  299  f.,  308  f.;  anti- 
theistic,  II,  294  f.,  296  f.;  failure 
of,  II,  301  f.;  concept  of,  as  applied 
to  God,  II,  308  f.;  parallel  between 
bodily  and  mental,  II,  524  f. 

Experience,  the  Religious,  its  char- 
acteristics, I,  4  f.,  24  f.,  263  f., 
360  f.,  406;  493  f.,  595  f.,  603  f., 
II,  312,  403  f.;  factors  of  knowl- 
edge in,  I,  24  f.,  298  f.,  333  f.,  493  f., 
360,  II,  38  f. ;  basis  of  philosophiz- 
ing, I,  27  f.,  279  f.,  II,  38  f.,  312  f.; 
untrustworthy  statistics  of,  I,  .36 
(note);  as  evidence  for  God,  II, 
38  f.,  311  f.;  and  for  redemption, 
II,  403  f. 

Faith,  the  religious,  I,  88  f.,  210  f., 
2S8  f.,  415  f.,  485  f.,  492  f.,  499  f., 
II,  210,  306  f.,  359  f.;  relation  of, 
to  dogma.  I,  4S7  f.,  190  f.;  .s[>eoific 
nature  of.  I,  4S0,  493  f..  496,  499, 
II,  23  f.,  51 1 ;  Christian  doctrine  of, 
I,  500  f.,  502  f.;  God  as  Object  of, 


37 


578 


INDEX 


II,   3f.,   21  f.,   306  f.;   as  way  of 

Salvation,  I,  559  f. 
Fakirs,  I,  67. 

Fate,  Greek  conception  of,  II,  356  f . 
Feeling,  the  religious,  I,  269  f.,  271  f., 

284,   289  f.,    292  f.,    297  f.,    377  f., 

439  f.;  the  so-called  "cosmic,"  I, 

275  f.,  377;  not  simply  fear,  I,  284; 

the    sexual,    in    religion,    I,    293; 

higher  forms  of,  I,  298  f.,  439  f.; 

the  aesthetical,  in  religion,  I,  327  f., 

377  f.,  439  f. 
Festival,  the  religious,  I,  571  f. 
Fetishism,  I,  92;  nature  of,  I,  96  f., 

104  f.,    124,   233  f.,   385,   II,   317; 

combined  with  higher  conceptions, 

I,  124  f.,  385;  forms  of,  I,  223  f. 
Fichte,  on  nature  of  religion,  1, 117  f.; 

and  the  ontological  proof,  II,  49; 
nature  of  life,  II,  306. 

Finns,  religion  of,  I,  386. 

Fire,  worship  of,  I,  174  f.,  281,  386. 

Fiske,  on  destiny  of  man,  II,  546 
(note) . 

Flint,  Prof.,  on  proof  for  Being  of 
God,  II,  27,  35  (note),  72;  on  ag- 
nosticism, II,  238;  and  pantheism, 

II,  253. 

Fravashis,  II,  485  (note). 

Frazer,  J.  G.,  I,  34  (and  note),  103, 
144  f.,  188  (note),  265,  II,  130,  203 
(note). 

Freedom,  nature  of  the  human,  I, 
334  f.,  338,  601  f.,  II,  156,  157, 
349  f . ;  necessity  of,  to  religious  ex- 
perience, II,  342  f.,  344  f. 

Fuegians,  morals  and  religion  of,  I, 
461. 

Funeral  Rites,  1, 126. 

Gatry,  on  the  argument  for  the 
Being  of  God,  II,  48  (note). 

Gaunilo,  on  Anselm's  argument,  II, 
46  f. 

Gautama  (see  Buddha). 

Genius,  worship  of,  at  Rome,  I,  402  f. 

Glooskap,  II,  212. 


Gnostics,  doctrine  of,  I,  343  f.,  II, 
425  f. 

God  (see  also  Divine  Being),  concep- 
tion of,  I,  59  f.,  132,  206  f.,  231  f., 
333  f.,  349  f.,  432  f.,  444  f.,  II,  3  f., 
41  f.,  53  f.,  101  f.;  as  infinite  and 
absolute,  I,  185  f.,  265,  333  f., 
344  f.,  347  f.,  II,  4f.,  12  f.,  53  f., 
94,  105  f..  Ill  f.,  122  f.;  his  Father- 
hood, I,  205  f.,  245,  247  f.,  410, 
II,  187  f.,  191  f.,  216,  354;  Old- 
Testament  conception  of,  I,  206  f., 
II,  186  f.;  as  righteous,  I,  206  f., 
333  f.,  460  f.,  471,  II,  177,  204  f.; 
and  a  unity,  I,  206  f.,  231  f.,  246  f., 
288  f.,  310  f.,  369  f.,  II,  68,  143  f., 
230,  254  f . ;  savage  conceptions  of, 

I,  224  f.,  364  f.,  II,  314  f.,  317; 
various  names  for,  I,  252,  364  f . ; 
as  ''Ultimate  Reality,"  I,  309, 
357  f.,  II,  12  f.;  and  the  ''Good 
One,"  I,  333,  II,  179  f.,  185  f., 
213  f.;  as  Spirit,  I,  349  f.,  369  f., 
409  f.,  493,  511  f.,  534,  611  f.,  II, 
12  f.,  64,  68,  105  f.,  147  f.,  213  f., 
268  f.,  310  f.,  345  f.,  445  f.,  537  f., 
546  f.,  559  f.;  as  Ideal-Real,  I, 
369  f.,  II,  98  f.,  105,  211  f.;  and 
transcendent,  I,  432  f.,  II,  279  f.; 
importance  of  conception  of,  II, 
3  f.,  8  f.,  19  f.;  argument  for  Being 
of,  II,  21  f.,  26  f.,  32  f.,  36  f.,  40  f., 
45  f.,  50  f.,  54  f.,  66  f.,  80  f.;  as 
"First  Cause,"  II,  53  f.;  as  self- 
conscious,  II,  71  f.,  81  f.,  90  f., 
115  f.,  136  f.;  metaphysical  predi- 
cates   of,    II,     122  f.;    as    power, 

II,  123  f.,  128,  214,  230;  eternity 
of,  II,  130  f.,  132  f.;  omniscience 
of,  II,  134  f.,  137  f.,  141  f.;  moral 
attributes  of,  II,  177-199;  holiness 
of,  II,  200  f.,  202  f.,  210  f.;  wisdom 
of,  II,  212  f.,  286  f.;  perfection  of, 
II,  213  f.;  relations  of,  to  the  world, 
II,  222  f.,  226  f.,  237  f.,  247  f., 
254  f.,  266  f.,  276  f.,  286  f.,  307  f., 
363  f.;    equal    the    Supernatural 


INDEX 


579 


II,  265,  278  f.,  282  f.;  as  Creator, 
II,  314  f.,  320,  326  f.,  330  f.,  337  f.; 
as  "Upholder,"  II,  335  f.;  and 
Moral  Ruler,  II,  343-381,  386  f.; 
perfection  of  his  rule,  II,  359  f.;  as 
Providence,  II,  373  f.;  and  Re- 
deemer, II,  382-409;  as  source  and 
object  of  revelation,  II,  411  f., 
419  f.,  444  f. 

Goethe,  I,  4,  116,430. 

Gospel,  the,  its  nature,  I,  132  (note), 
210  f.,  II,  396  f.,  398  f. 

Granger,  I,  21. 

Grant,  Sir  A.,  II,  504. 

Grasserie,  Raoul  de  la,  on  classifica- 
tion of  religions,  I,  162  f.;  his  theory 
of  "expropriation,"  I,  324  f. 

Greeks,  religion  of,  I,  177  f.,  183  f., 
244,  400  f.,  465  f.,  II,  394  f.; 
naturalistic  divinities  of,  I,  400; 
democratic  influence  over,  I,  400  f.; 
ethics  and  morality  of,  I,  465  f., 
474  f.,  II,  394  f. 

Gregory,  the  Great,  I,  451. 

Griffis,  on  ancestor- worship  in  Japan, 
I,  172;  and  unwritten  religions,  I, 
242;  on  Ku-Sha  teaching,  511;  and 
doctrine  of  evil  Kami,  II,  164. 

Grimm,  J.,  I,  32  f. 

Gruppe,  I,  104  f.,  140,  177. 

Guga,  worship  of,  I,  67. 

Guyau,  M.,  I,  16,  82,  115  (note), 
276,  591,  II,  462  f.,  464  f. 

Haeckel,  I,  240,  II,  270,  521  f. 
Hamilton,  Sir  Wm.,  II,  200  (note). 
Harms,  II,  49. 
Hamack,  on  nature  of  Christianity, 

I,  70,  132  (note),  210,  478,  507,  554, 

II,  l.S8f.,  329,  398,  427,  470,  511; 
on  the  work  of  Paul,  I,  212;  the 
asceticism  of  Jcsu.s,  I,  478;  on 
dogma,  I,  507;  on  the  Logos- 
doctrine,  II,  320  (note);  on  the 
primitive    community,    TI,    105. 

Harris  Prof.  S.,  on  a  theodicy,  II, 
159,   192  f. 


'  Hartmann,  von,  on  nature  of  modem 
criticism,  I,  71  (note);  nature  of 
religious  consciousness,  I,  138, 
283  f.,  298,  327  f. 

Hatch,  on  assumptions  of  early  or- 
thodoxy, I,  71,  II,  101  f.;  influences 
of  Greek  philosophy,  I,  212  f., 
432  f.,  501;  early  Logos-doctrine, 
II,  329. 

Heaven,  worship  of,  I,  148,  348  f., 
463  f.,  549  f.,  II,  322  f.,  357  f., 
498;  rule  of,  II,  357  f. 

Hebrews,  cosmogony  of,  II,  317  f., 
319  f.,  325  f.,  333  f.;  doctrine  of 
souls  among,  II,  488  f.,  504  f. 

Hegel,  on  philosophy  of  religion,  I,  8, 
56;  on  nature  of  religion,  I,  118, 
510;  and  proofs  for  the  Being  of 
God,  II,  37. 

Henotheism,  I,  154  f.,  179,  189. 

Herder,  I,  8,  II,  49. 

Herodotus,  I,  30. 

Hesiod,  I,  387. 

Hillel,  I,  208,  475. 

Hinduism,  its  metaphysics,  I,  77, 
180  f.,  381  f.,  543  f.,  II,  319;  its 
jumble  of  religions,  I,  94,  180, 
574  f.,  II,  391  f.  (note);  and  schools 
of  philosophy,  I,  180  f.;  its  ritual, 

I,  294  f.;  its  emotionalism,  I,  381; 
and  bondage  to  tradition,  I,  461  f.; 
its  doctrine  of  salvation,  I,  543  f., 

II,  391;  cosmogony  of,  II,  319. 
Hoffding,    on   nature   of   religion,   I, 

274  f.,  498;  validity  of  faith,  I,  498. 
Hoemes,  on   paUrolithic  man,  I,  126 

(note). 
Holiness,    early    conceptions    of,    I, 

233  f.,   II,   200  f.;  not   pa&sionlcss, 

II,   207  f.;   God   as   the   All-Holy, 

II,  204  f.  (note),  211. 
Ilonovar,  Persian  conception  of,  II, 

428. 
Hooker,    Dr.,    I,    123f. 
Hopkins,  on   religion   of  Dravidians, 

I,  169;  and  of  the  Vetlius,  I,  242, 

401,  511,  II,  183;  on  the  pantheism 


580 


INDEX 


of  the  Upanishads,  11,  120,  323; 
Vedic  conception  of  Right,  II,  183; 
on  the  Hindii  cosmogony,  II,  319, 
323;  on  Nirvana,  II,  393. 

Howard,  I,  156. 

Howison,  II,  12  f.,  40. 

Howitt,  I,  145. 

Hoznmi,  Prof.  N.,  on  ancestor- 
worship  in  Japan,  I,  173,  403,  571. 

Huacas,  II,  265. 

Humboldt,  I,  282. 

Ideal,  the,  of  religion,  I,  26,  74  f., 
129  f.,  257  f.,  351  f.,  443  f.,  II, 
211  f.,  559  f.,  562  f.,  565  f.,  567; 
the  moral,  I,  76  f.,  258  f.;  the 
social,  II,  557  f.,  561  f. 

Idol,  the,  forms  of,  I,  155  f.;  origin 
of,  I,  155  f. 

Imagination,  use  of,  in  religion,  I, 
93  f.,  315  f.,  367,  436  f.,  448  f.;  and 
in  art,  I,  436  f. 

Incantation,  nature  of,  I,  267,  517  f., 
II,  423;  relation  of,  to  prayer,  I, 
517  f. 

India,  religions  of,  I,  28,  31,  58  f.,  94, 
182  f.,  401,  518  f.,  II,  201  f.;  their 
motley  character,  I,  182  f.;  con- 
ception of  worship,  I,  518  f., 
II,  201  f.;  and  of  purity,  II,  201  f. 

Individual,  the,  reality  of,  I,  594  f., 
II,  543  f.;  religion,  as  related  to, 

I,  595  f.,  598  f.,  602  f.;  experience 
of,  I,  600  f.,  604  f.;  immortaUty  of, 

II,  479  f.,  503  f.,  510  f.,  516  f., 
520  f . ;  physical  development  of, 
II,  522  f.;  value  of,  II,  543  f. 

Indra,  worship  of,  I,  58,  519  f., 
II,    183;    as    destroyer    of    Naga, 

I,  101. 

Infinite,  the,  conception  of,  in  reli- 
gion, 1, 153  f.,  II,  108  f.;  as  applied 
to  Deity,  II,  107  f.,  Ill  f.;  as 
negative  notion,   II,   109  f. 

Inspiration,  as  distinguished  from 
revelation,  II,  422  f.;  the  Christian, 

II,  421,  431  f.;  a  personal  affair, 


II,  422  f.;  through  ecstasy,  II,  424; 
post-Reformation  doctrine  of,  II, 
429  (note);  Hindu  doctrine  of, 
II,  430. 

Instinct,  influence  in  religion,  I, 
279  f. 

Ishtar,  worship  of,  I,  162,  467. 

Islam,  its  claim  to  universality,  I, 
130  f.,  199  f.,  550  f.,  II,  472  f.;  its 
characteristics,  I,  199  f.,  201  f., 
217,  235,  406,  550  f.,  II,  472  f.; 
attitude  toward  civilization,  I, 
215  f.,  397  f.;  conception  of  Allah, 

I,  406,  582  f.,  II,  85,  124;  church 
of,  I,  581  f. 

Jacobi,  I,  510. 

Jainism,  as  a  reform,  I,  159,  II,  392; 
its  doctrine  of  salvation,    II,  392. 

James,  Prof.  Wm.,  II,  527  (note),  534 
(note). 

Japan,  ancestor-worship  in,  I,  149, 
172,  403,  571 ;  influence  of  Bud- 
dhism in,  I,  396,  492,  578,  II,  393; 
sects  in,  I,  492;  the  Ku-Sha  teach- 
ing, I,  511;  and  that  of  Shinran, 

II,  394. 

Jastrow,  Morris,  on  study  of  religion, 
I,  8  (note),  218,  239,  456;  on  reli- 
gion of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  1,68, 
90  (note),  234,  287,  396,  399,  421, 
447  f.,  518,  573,  II,  318,  498;  on 
Judaism,  I,  206;  on  founders  of 
religion,  I,  229  f .  (note) ;  religion 
and  morality,  I,  456,  471. 

Jehovah  (see  Yahweh). 

Jesus,  his  attitude  toward  Judaism, 

I,  209  f.,   407,   529  f.,   536,  556  f., 

II,  396  f.;  Gospel  of,  I,  210  f.,  407  f. 
432,  501  f.,  554  f.,  II,  187  f.,  396  f.; 
personal  influence  of,  I,  228  f., 
II,  400  f.;  as  Founder  of  Christian- 
ity, I,  407  f.,  546,  554  f.,  II,  187  ^; 
425  f . ;  doctrine  of  his  sonship, 
I,  431  f.;  II,  187  f.,  397,  400; 
asceticism  of,  I,  478;  faith  in,  I, 
501  f.,  530,  II,  400  f.;  his  doctrine 


INDEX. 


681 


of  prayer,  I,  536,  538  f.;  and  self- 
sacrifice,  I,  558  f . ;  of  God  as 
Father,  II,  187  f.,  282  f.,  425  f.; 
view  of  nature,  II,  282  f.;  as 
Redeemer,  II,  396  f.;  and  "son  of 
man,"  II,  397  (note);  death  of, 
II,  399  f.;  as  special  Divine  revela- 
tion, II,  425  f.,  442;  miracles  of, 
II,  442  f.;  views  of  the  future,  II, 
509  f.,  511  f.,  564;  his  doctrine  of 
"the  Kingdom,"  II,  564  f. 

Jevons,  on  origin  of  religion,  I,  143, 
155  f.;  and  nature  of  cult,  I,  517, 
521  (note);  on  savage  logic,  II,  266. 

Judaism,  an  historical  religion,  I,  63  f., 
204  f.,  558,  II,  469  f.;  its  exclusive- 
ness,  I,  82,  208,  407;  development 
of,  I,  204  f.,  407  f.,  II,  469  f.; 
characteristic  tenets  of,  I,  206  f., 
209,  247  f.,  295  f.,  473  f.,  538;  its 
conception  of  God,  I,  295  f.,  407, 
473  f.,  500  f.,  558,  II,  8  f.,  177  f., 
204  f.,  469  f.;  as  religious  faith, 
I,  500,  558  f.;  its  "Priestly  Code," 
I,  524,  534;  as  doctrine  of  salvation, 
I,  558,  II,  395  f.;  "churchifyingof," 

I,  584  f.;  eschatology  of,  II,  505  f,, 
507,  509  f. 

Juno,  I,  188  f. 
Jupiter,  I,  187  f. 

Ka,  conception  of,  485  (note),  495  f. 

Kami,  conception  of,  II,  6,  164,  265. 

Kami-no- Michi    (see   Shinto). 

Kafir,  logic  of,  II,  266. 

Kaftan,  II,  209. 

Kamsrhatka,     religion    of,     I,     112, 

II,  224. 

Kant,  on  nature  of  religion,  I,  115, 
142,  ^M^  f.,  442,  486;  his  concep- 
tion of  rcii-son,  I,  .'^)3  f.,  II,  34;  on 
argil meut  for  Being  of  God,  I, 
309  f.,  II,  33  f.,  46  f.,  48  f.,  5-1  f., 
63,  100;  feeling  of  the  sublime,  I. 
327  f.,  440,  II,  93;  on  faith  iind 
knowlcdgo,  I,  367,  4K7  f.,  II.  23  f., 
240  f.;  the  end«  of  life,   I,    186  f, 


II,  453  f.;  on  value  of  personality, 
II,  533;  his  argument  for  inmior- 
tality,   II,   535,   542. 

Karma,  doctrine  of,  I,  285,  472, 
547  f.,  II,  50,  168  f.,  386,  492  f., 
500. 

Keary,  Mr.,  I,  300,  388  f. 

Khonds,  legends  of,  I,  385;  prayer 
of,  I,  532. 

Kingdom  of  God,  conception  of, 
I,  410,  585,  II,  427  f.,  551  f.,  553, 
559  f.,  563  f.;  Jewish  hope  of,  II, 
551,    553;    Christian    view    of,    II, 

551  f.,  559  f.,  563  f.,  565  f.;  not 
identical    with    the    Church,    II, 

552  f.,  560  f. 

Kitchen-Middens,   I,   126   (note). 

Klostermann,  II,  205  f. 

Knowledge,  character  of  the  reli- 
gious, I,  24  f.,  426  f.,  II,  22  f.,  36, 
100,  141  f.,  242  f. 

Kojiki,  I,  173,  520,  531,  II,  201,  319. 
Koran,  I,  232,  469,  II,  129,  132,  135, 

143. 
Krishna,  I,  294  f.,  467. 
Kuan  Yin  (see  Kwannon). 
Kuenen,   II,   202  f.,   206. 
Kwannon,  worship  of,  I,  164,  253. 

Lang,  Andrew,  on  origin  of  religion, 
I,  153  (note),  223  (note),  226;  on 
belief  in  "creator  gods,"  I,  226; 
and  relation  of  morality  and  re- 
ligion, I,  461. 

Lares,  the,  I,  187,  393. 

Law,  Wm.,  I,  272. 

Law,  the.  Jesus'  attitude  toward,  I, 
209  f.;  Judaism's  conception  of, 
I,  209,  407;  the  Uviticul,  I,  526. 

Laws,  in  development  of  religion, 
I,  217  f.;  in  nature,  II.  54  f.,  57  f., 
nil  f,  311  f.,  4;i5f.,  439. 

Ijca,  11.  C.,  I,   IG8. 

\Ai  Conte,  Prof ,  II,  279. 

Legico,  on  fetishism  in  China,  I,  07; 
on  ConfurianiHrn.  I.  191;  and 
Taoiam,  II,  498  (note). 


582 


INDEX 


Leibnitz,  II,  14,  49. 

Lepchas,  I,  124. 

Lessing,  I,  8  (note). 

Levins,  R.,  L,  343. 

Li-ceremonial,  I,  515. 

Lindsay,  II,  54. 

Lingam,  worship  of,  I,  155,  162,  294, 
II,  6. 

Lippert,  on  nature  of  religion,  I,  147. 

Livingstone,  David,  on  religious  be- 
liefs of  Africa,  I,  127. 

Locke,  on  argument  for  Being  of 
God,  II,  35. 

Logos,  doctrine  of,  I,  431  f.,  II, 
191  f.;  the  Greek,  II,  191  f.;  the 
Christian,  II,  327  f.  (note),  328  f. 

Longinus,  I,  441. 

Lotze,  on  relations  of  theology  and 
science,  I,  422;  on  personality  of 
God,  II,  87  f.,  244  f.;  and  Divine 
relations  to  the  world,  II,  224  f. 

Lubbock,  Sir  John,  claims  religion, 
not  universal,  I,  121  (note),  II, 
316. 

Maat,  the  two-fold,  II,  204. 

Magic,  as  religion,  I,  103  f.,  153  f., 
II,  416;  impulses  of,  I,  208. 

Maha-jana,  II,  253  (note) 

Maha-Vagga,   I,   576  f. 

Mallock,  I,  363  f. 

Man,  a  religious  being,  I,  3  f.,  12  f., 
25,  133  f.,  138  f.,  215  f.,  262  f., 
323  f.,  346  f.,  II,  306  f.,  339,  383  f., 
411  f.,  566  f.;  spiritual  unity  of, 
I,  20,  25,  134  f.,  215,  II,  558  f.; 
as  differenced  from  lower  animals, 

I,  20,  138  f.,  324  f.;  palaeolithic,  I, 
126  (note),  240;  as  "maker  of 
religion,"  I,  262  f.,  346  f.,  II,  383  f., 
411  f.;  as  rational,  I,  324  f.,  333  f.; 
self-determining,   I,   333  f.,   338  f., 

II,  339  f.;  in  "the  divine  image," 
I,  345-371,  339  f.;  his  place  in 
nature,  II,  306  f.;  need  of  redemp- 
tion, II,  383  f.,  385  f.,  386  f.;  as 
subject   of   revelation,    II,   411  f.. 


424  f.;  dual  existence  of,  II,  483  f., 

520  f.;  animal  nature  of,  II,  520  f.; 

future  of  the  race  of,  II,  550-565. 
Manichseism,  II,  166. 
Manito,  I,  101,  316,  II,  317. 
Marcion,  I,  170. 
Marcus  Aurelius,  II,  191. 
Marduk,  the  god,  I,  52,  168,  220,  287, 

531,  533,  II,  183,  318  f. 
Mariner,  II,  180. 
Martin,   Dr.,   on  religions  of  China, 

I,  164,  172  f.,  II,  78,  376,  497. 
Martineau,  I,  115,  159. 

Maxwell,  Clerk,  on  nature  of  atoms, 

II,  78  f.,  297. 

Maya,  I,  359,  II,  167  f.,  337. 

Meadows,  Dr.,  I,  464. 

Mechanism,  as  theory  of  origin,  II, 
243  f.,  247  f.,  250  f.;  in  modem 
science,  II,   245  f.,  434  f. 

Mediator,  conception  of,  II,  388  f. 

Megasthenes,  on  religion  of  India, 
II,  501. 

Menant,  on  Zoroastrianism,  II,  320  f. 

Mencius,  I,  532. 

Mercury,  I,  280. 

Merz,  I,  17. 

Metaphysics,  in  religious  experience, 

I,  23  f.,  47,  274;  necessary  to  re- 
ligion, I,  47  f.,  274  f.,  309,  354  f.; 
the  Hindii,  I,  77. 

Mexicans,  religion  of  the,  I,  386. 

Mexico  (and  Peru),  religions  of,  I, 
20  f.,  127  f.,  149,  457  f. 

Meyer,  H.  A.  W.,  II,  425  (note). 

Mill,  J.  S.,  I,  116. 

Miracles,  present  objections  to,  II, 
432  f.,  437  f.;  Old-Testament  con- 
ception of,  II,  433  f . ;  not  violation 
of  law,  II,  435  f.,  441  f.;  of  Jesus, 

II,  436  f.,  442  f. 

Mithras,  worship  of,  in  Rome,  I,  189, 

254. 
Monism,  philosophical,  as  a  religious 

doctrine,     I,     27  f.,     204,     438  f.; 

ethical,  I,  333  f.,  II,  166  f. 
Monotheism,  Hebrews  did  not  origi- 


INDEX 


583 


nate,  I,  206;  early  advances  toward 

I,  224  f. 
Montefiore,  II,  205. 

Morality,  ideal  of,  I,  76  f.;  relation 
of,  to  religion,  I,  59,  78,  89,  116  f., 
454  f.,  457  f.,  460  f.,  466  f.,  480  f., 

II,  353  f.;  "double  code"  of,  I, 
476  f.;  involves  personality,  II, 
353  f.;  of  natural  law,  II,  360  f. 

Morris,  Mr.  Wra.,  I,  451. 

Mosaism,  I,  205  f. 

Miiller,  Max,  on  savage  religions,  I, 
106;  and  primitive  man,  I,  136, 
148;  origin  of  religion,  I,  148,  153  f., 

275  (note),  II,  65. 
Mullcr,  Otfried,  I,  111. 
Muhammad,  as  a  prophet,  I,  200,  581, 

II,  416  f.;  his  doctrine  of  salvation, 
I,  550  f.;  as  founder  of  a  church, 

I,  581  f.;  inspiration  of,  II,  416  f., 
428. 

Muhammadism  (see  Islam). 
Mungan-ngaur,  belief  in,  I,  145. 
Mura  Mura,  the  "rain-givers,"  I,  145. 
Mysticism,  I,  344,  381. 
Myth,  the,  in  religion,  I,  145  f.,  456  f. 
Mythology,  not  same  as  religion,  I, 
146  f. 

Naoa,  worship  of,  I,  79,  101. 
Nassau,   on   fetishi.sm   in  Africa,   II, 

317,  4S8. 
Nature,    religious    conception    of,    I, 

230,  355  f.,  3.S3  f.,  II,  269  f.,  273  f., 

276  f.,  2.S4  f.,  362  f.,  418  f.;  scien- 
tific conception  of,  I,  355  f.,  II, 
200  f.,  271  f.,  2.S3,  292,  294  f., 
301  f.,  4;U  f.,  4:iS  f.;  iiifluenco  of, 
on    man,    I,    375  f.,    377  f.,    383  f., 

II,  300  f.;  I'nity  of,  I,  3.S4.  II,  72, 
230,  240;  di-stiiiguishotl  from  the 
Suixinmtunil,  II,  2(i4-2S9;  monil 
elements  in,  II.  3(.0  f.,  llSf.; 
revelation  in,  II,   IIS  f. 

Nature-worxhip,  mystery  in,  I,  10  f., 
230,  :i83  f.;  extenMion  of,  I,  173  f., 
391  f.;  elevation  of,  I,  391  f. 


Xavajos,  religion  of,  I,  100,  532, 
II,  224,  488. 

Xaville,  M.,  II,  210  (note). 

Xdengei,  the  god,  I,  226. 

Nebuchadnezzar  I,  religious  char- 
acter of,  I,  52,  287,  574. 

Neo-Platonism,  its  views  of  the  Ab- 
solute, I,  6;  influence  upon  Chris- 
tianity, I,  213,  256. 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  II,  145  (note). 

Nichols,  E.  L.,  II,  76  (note). 

Nirvana,  II,  168, 169,  391,  392  (note), 
493,  496,  499,  500. 

Nitzsch,  C.  I.,  I,  137. 

Xjambi,  the  god,  II,  317. 

Novales,  I,  284. 

Oakesmith,  II,  42,  103,  428. 
Old  Testament,  as  revelation,  I,  210, 
II,  431  f.;  attitude  of  Jesus  toward, 

I,  210  f.;  views  of,  on  inspiration, 

II,  423  f.,  431  f.;  and  miracle,  II, 
433  f.,  436  f. 

"Ontological  Consciousness,"   I,  47, 

309  f.,    311  f.,    332  f.,   351,    358  f., 

493  f.,    II,   484  f.,   487. 

Ophiology  (see  Serpent,  worship  oO- 

Orelli,   on  classification  of  religions, 

I,  162  f.  (note);  and  conception  of 
civilization,  I,  215. 

Osiris,  I,  179,  181,  392,  II,  124,  394  f., 

496  f. 
"Other-Soul,"  Ixilief  in,  I,  S9  f. 
"Over-Soul,"   belief  in,   I,  89  f. 
Owen,  I,  57. 

Panpsychi.sm,  I,  4;iS  f. 

Pantheism,    that    of    India,    I,    1S3, 

:js0f.,  438  f.,  II,   17S,  230,  252  f.; 

Its   conception   of   God,    I,   43S  f., 

II,  178,  252  f..  258  f.;  a.H  theorj-  of 
origins,  II,  251  f. ;  identifier  God 
and  the  World.  II.  252  f.,  250  f., 
2.5.4  f.;  critiriHrn  of,   II.   J.'.0  f. 

Paradi.se.  early  picture*  of,  I,  146. 
ParMi.s,  their  worship  of  fire,  I,  17.^. 
Pascal,  I,  327,  II,  GS  (note). 


584 


INDEX 


Paul,  his  influence  on  Christianity, 

I,  211  f.,  587  f.,  II,  189  f.,  369  f., 
547;  founder  of  the  Church,  I, 
587  f.;  theology  of,  II,  189;  doc- 
trine of  spiritual  development,  II, 
369  f.,  509;  and  of  revelation,  II, 
417  f.,  427;  eschatology  of,  II,  509, 
512  f.,  547. 

Personality,  conception  of,  in  re- 
ligion, I,  154  f.,  362  f.,  443  f.,  II, 
259  f.,  346  f.,  354  f.;  the  religious 
Ideal,  I,  353  f.,  443  f.,  II,  87  f., 
259  f.,  346  f.;  relations  of,  between 
Divine  and  human,  II,  344  f. 

Personification,  process  of,  I,  238  f., 
352  f.,  354  f.,  362  f.,  386. 

Peru  (see  Mexico  and  Peru). 

Peschel,   I,   299. 

Petronius,  I,  284. 

Pfleiderer,  on  nature  of  religion,  I, 
111  f.,  118,  151,  II,  49  f.;  and  its 
origin,  I,  151;  on  religious  cult,  I, 
516;  and  the  ontological  argument, 

II,  49  f.;  the  moral  argument,  II, 
62  f . ;  the  Divine  predicates,  II,  97 
(note),  128;  on  Zoroastrianism,  II, 
165;  and  Paul,  II,  369  f. 

Phallus,  worship  of,  I,  155  (see  also 
Lingam) . 

Philo,  his  Logos-doctrine,  I,  433 
(note),  II,  27  f.,  191  f.;  his  doctrine 
of  faith,  I,  502  f.;  and  conception 
of  God,  II,  27,  191  f. 

Philosophy,  nature  of,  I,  4  f,,  21  f., 

•  43  f.,  61  f.,  607  f.,  II,  213  f.;  method 
of,  I,  6f.;  need  of,  I,  12  f.,  65  f., 
428  f.,  607  f.,  II,  213  f.;  temper  of, 
I,  22  f.;  a  "Mystagogue"  to  the- 
ology, I,  43,  429;  relation  of,  to 
religion,  I,  428  f.,  607  f.,  II,  213  f. 

Physicus,  II,  295  f.,  297. 

Pistis  Sophia,  I,  506  (note),  120. 

Pitris,  worship  of,  I,  172,  II,  485. 

Plato,  on  the  gods  of  mythology, 
I,  316,  466;  on  the  teleological  ar- 
gument, I,  55;  and  nature  and 
destiny  of  the  soul,  II,  503  f. 


Plotinus,  I,  445  (note),  II,  28  f. 

Plutarch,  attempt  of,  to  construct  a 
philosophy  of  religion,  I,  42  f.,  430, 
II,  42  f.;  on  the  mysteries,  I,  524; 
and  demonology,  II,  42  f.,  190; 
on  the  conception  of  God,  II,  103  f., 
184,  190,  387;  doctrine  of  creation, 
II,  320;  on  immortality,  II,  541. 

Pluvius,  prayer  to,  I,  285. 

Powell,   Baden,   II,   58  f. 

Prayer,  as  form  of  cult,  I,  512  f., 
516  f.,  530  f.,  II,  377  f.;  universahty 
of,  I,  516  f.;  Christian  practice  of, 
I,  530  f.;  theory  of,  II,  377  f. 

Preiss,  on  classification  of  religions, 
I,  161  f.;  on  primitive  man,  I,  241; 
on  Chinese  religions,  II,  322. 

Priesthood,  influence  of,  I,  404  f.; 
legislation  of  Jewish,  I,  407. 

"Primitive  Man,"  our  ignorance  of, 

I,  134  f.,  137,  391  f. 
Prophetism,  in  Israel,  I,  207  f. 
Prophets,  the   Hebrew,  work  of,  I, 

63  f.,  206  f.,  208,  220,  534  f.;  in- 
spiration of,  II,  424  f.  ' 

Providence,  Jesus'  view  of,  II,  282  f.; 
doctrine  of,  II,  373  f.,  379  f.,  417; 
general  and  especial,  II,  374. 

Prussians,  worship  of  the  dead 
among,  I,  170  f. 

Psychology,  relation  of,  to  philoso- 
phy of  religion,  I,  12  f.,  18  f.,  21, 
55,  60,  261  f.,  275  f.;  tests  furnished 
by,  I,  60,  125  f. 

Ptah,  I,  155;  maxims  of,  I,  463. 

Piinjer,  I,  7. 

Puluga,    I,    226. 

QuATREFAGES,  On  Universality  of 
religion,  I,  124. 

Ra,  the  god,  I,  52,   149,   181,  532, 

II,  73  f.,  375. 
"Race-culture,"    conception    of,    I 

215  f.,  II,  456  f.,  459  f.,  467  £. 
Rainmakers,  I,   103. 


INDEX 


585 


Rameses    II,  religion  of,  I,  52,  533, 

II,  375,  486. 
Rationality,  as  final  test  of  religion, 

I,  73  f.,  SO,  274  f.,  303  f.,  312  f., 
320  f.;  of  the  savage  man,  I,  305, 
310;  analysis  of  the  human,  I, 
305  f.,  309  f.,  312,  324  f.,  330  f.; 
divine  nature  of,  I,  346  f.,  356  f.; 
of  belief  in  God,  II,  43  f.,  50,  74  f. 

Rationalism,  I,  351. 

Reality,  religion  a  theory  of,  I,  18, 
73  f.,  115,  274  f.,  350  f.,  357,  II,  70, 
568  f.;  man  a  believer  in,  I,  47, 
274  f.,  308  f.,  3.57  f.;  Ideal  of,  I, 
73  f.,  115  f.,  350  f.,  II,  568  f.;  of 
the   Object   of   religion,   I,   307  f., 

II,  568  f. 

Reason,  conception  of,  I,  40  f.,  43  f., 
54  f.,  303  f.,  II,  28  f.,  358  f.;  ac- 
cording to  Kant,  I,  303  f.;  appeal 
to,  by  Plutarch,  I,  43;  God,  as  the 
Universal,  II,  28,  358  f. 

Redskins,  theriolatry  among,  1, 100  f., 
170;  regarded  as  not  human,  I,  123; 
belief  of,  in  "creator  gods,"  I,226f. 

Religion,  nature  of,  I,  3  f.,  11  f.,  15  f., 
18,  24  f.,  35  f.,  39,  57  f.,  60,  85  f., 
93  f.,  103  f.,  110  f.,  114  f.,  125  f., 
269  f.,  274  f.,  319  f.,  411  f.,  594  f., 
II,  383  f.,  410  f.,  412  f.,  444,  461  f., 
566  f.;  origin  of,  I,  19  f.,  86  f., 
133  f.,  142,  150  f.,  261  f.,  269  f., 
274  f.,  281  f.,  346  f.,  II,  411  f., 
rationality  of,  I,  40  f.,  54  f.,  73  f., 
274  f.;  meaning  of  word,  I,  87; 
definition  of,  I,  89;  as  "unreflecting 
spiritism,"  I,  89  f.,  103  f.,  110  f., 
not  same  im  magic,  I,  103  f.;  de- 
vcloi)ment  of,  I,  112  f.,  158  f.; 
190  f.,  203-258,  II,  412,  454  f.;  as 
d(X'trinc  of  Divine  Heing,  1,  113; 
uni verbid ity  of,  I,  120  f.,  125  f.; 
clmracteristics  of,  fitted  to  survive, 
I,  129  f.,  l.W  f.,  II,  45-1  f.;  cause  of 
the  dilTerentiation  of,  I,  l.'»9f., 
165  f.,  1.S5  f.;  founders  of,  I,  2'29  f.; 
impulsive    aourcea    of,    I,    27S  f.; 


rational  sources  of,  I,  305  f.;  as 
belief  in  the  supernatural,  I,  319; 
ethical  elements  in,  I,  326  f.,  369, 
456  f.;  physical  environment  of,  I, 
372  f.,  377  f.;  relation  of,  to  science, 
I,  412  f.,  419  f.,  423  f.;  and  to  art, 

I,  435-453;  and  to  morality,  I, 
455  f.;  the  cult  of,  I,  512  f.;  indi- 
viduality of,  I,  594  f.;  as  doctrine 
of  salvation,  II,  383  f.;  and  as  reve- 
lation, II,  410 f.,  445 f.;  as  "psychic 
uplift,"  II,  443  f.,  467  f.;  future  of, 

II,  453  f.,  462  f.,  465  f. 
Religion,  Philosophy  of,  its  nature, 

I,  3f.,  7  f.,  27  f.,  607  f.;  as  criterion 
in  religion,  I,  110  f.;  relation  to 
different  sciences,  I,  12  f.,  17  f.,  22; 
its  method,  I,  3  f.,  7  f.,  10  f.,  13  f., 
17-28,  62  f.,  607  f.;  is  psychologi- 
cal, 19  f.;  epistemological  assump- 
tions of,  I,  23  f.,  607  f.;  basis  in 
racial  experience,  I,  27  f.,  66  f.; 
difficulties  of,  I,  29  f.,  35  f.,  42  f., 
121  f.;  conditions  of  success  in,  I, 
46;  value  of,  I,  46  f.,  65  f.;  standard 
of  values  in,  I,  51  f. 

Religion,  Science  of,  I,  10  f.,  42  f.; 
possibility  of,  I,  10  f.,  42;  a  psycho- 
logical study,  I,  11  f.,  18,  21;  early 
mistakes  in,  I,  30  f.,  35  f.;  recent 
advances  in,  I,  31  f. 

Religions,   variety   of,   I,   88,    157  f., 

II,  355  f.;  so-callcil  world-religions, 
1, 128  f.;  differentiation  of,  I,  158  f., 
165  f.,  185  f.;  classification  of,  I, 
161  f.,  II,  355  f.;  amalgamation  of, 

I,  166  f.;  syncretism  in,  I,  166  f., 
179  f. ;  theocratic  and  thennthropic, 

II,  355  f.;  of  siUvation,  II,  ;iS2  f., 
3S9  f. 

Renan,   M.,   I,  530  f. 

Kenouf,   M.,   on   religion   of  ancient 

Egypt,  I,  33,   155,  224,  392,  46:3, 

II.  73,  320. 
Resurrection,    Jewish    belief    in,    II, 

5(J7f..   509  f.;    Paula  doctrine  of, 

II,  512  f.,  5-18  f. 


586 


INDEX 


Revelation,  as  origin  of  religion,  I, 
153  f.,  432,  II,  410  f.,  413  f.,  415  f., 
426  f.,  442  f.,  445  f.;  early  Christian 
belief  in,  I,  432  f . ;  source  of,  II, 
411;  subject  of,  II,  411  f.;  condi- 
tions of,  II,  412  f.;  psychology  of, 
II,  415  f.,  442  f.;  means  of,  II,  416  f.; 
Christianity  as,  II,  425  f.,  442; 
by  miracle,  II,  432  f.,  442  f.;  modus 
operandi  of,  II,  442  f . ;  epochs  of, 
II,  443  f. 

R^ville,  M.,  on  religions  of  Mexico 
and  Peru,  I,  20  f.,  127  f.,  227  (note), 
457  f.,  520;  on  science  of  religion, 

I,  42  (note);  universality  of  re- 
ligion, I,  125,  II,  32;  and  religious 
cult,  I,  520. 

Ri,  Chinese  conception  of,  II,  28. 
Richet,  M.,  on  rapport,  I,  266. 
Rohde,     on     soul-cult     among     the 
Greeks,  II,  480;  and  dual  existence, 

II,  489  (note),  501  f.;  on  Eleusinian 
mysteries,  II,  502  f .  (note) ;  and 
Greek  doctrine  of  immortality,  II, 
503  f. 

Romanes,   I,  418   (note). 

Romans,  worship  of,  I,  174  f.,  186  f. 
(note),  392  f.,  402,  517,  522  f.;  list 
of  gods  of,  I,  186  f.,  394  f.;  mental 
characteristics  of,  I,  186  f.;  later 
phase  of  their  religion,  I,  189  f., 
401  f. 

Roskoff,  on  fetishism,  I,  96;  on  magic, 
I,  104;  on  universality  of  religion, 
I,  122  (note),  124  f.,  279;  and  re- 
ligious consciousness,  1, 279,  II,  52  f . 

Roth,  I,  264. 

Rouge,  M.,  I.  224. 

Royce,  Prof.,  I,  281,  496,  597,  II,  80, 
134,  222,  481. 

Sabatier,  on  characteristics  of  the 
age,  I,  50,  479;  on  the  word  "re- 
ligion," I,  87;  and  its  nature,  1, 116, 
125,  236  f.,  272;  classification  of 
religions,  I,  163;  on  influence  of 
Jesus,  I,  229  (note);  on  the  forma- 


tion of  the  religious  community, 
I,  564;  and  belief  in  God,  II,  39, 
284;  and  ministry  of  pain,  II,  152. 
Sacrifice,  as  form  of  cult,  I,  511  f., 
519  f.,  523  f.;  origin  of,  I,  519  f.; 
bloody,  I,  522  f.,  524  f.;  connection 
of,  with  mysteries,  I,  523  f . ;  of  the 
"Priestly  Code,"  I,  524;  value  of, 

I,  523  f.,  538  f.;  early  Jewish,  I, 
526  f.,  534. 

Sakya-Muni,  not  a  founder  of  new 
religion,  I,  106  f.;  his  ethical  teach- 
ing, I,  473  f. 

San-Pdo,  II,  141  (note). 

Santals,  I,  227. 

Sarkar,  Kishori  Lai,  I,  77,  246,  381. 

Saussaye,  De  la,  on  religion  of  the 
Teutons,    I,     146,     190  f.,    480  f., 

II,  184;  on  origin  of  religion,  I,  151; 
and  its  classification,  I,  161;  on 
cult,  I,   513. 

Savage,  the  religious  experience  of, 

I,  35  f.,  106,  122  f.,  137  f.,  156  f., 
277  f.,  205,  391  f.,  461;  shyness  of, 
in  religious  matters,  I,  122  f.;  our 
knowledge  of,  I,  134  f.;  conception 
of  spirit,  I,  156  f.,  II,  383;  belief  of, 
in  "creator  gods,"  I,  225  f.;  ration- 
ality of,  I,  305  f.,  II,  266  f.;  ethics 
of  the,  I,  461,  II,   180;  logic  of, 

II,  265  f. 
Sayce,  I,  154. 

Sbok,  the  god,  I,  181  f. 
Schleiermacher,  on  nature  of  religion, 

I,  116  (note),  269. 

Schmid,  on  Jesus'  views  of  the  future, 

II,  511  f. 

Schopenhauer,  his  conception  of  re- 
ligion, I,  117,  279;  on  argument  for 
Being  of  God,  II,  40;  and  belief  in 
immortality,  II,  487. 

Schultz,  D.  H.,  on  Judaism,  I,  82, 
207;  origin  of  religion,  I,  379  f.; 
religious  faith,  I,  496,  II,  39  f.,  63, 
410;  on  pessimism,  II,  386. 

Schurman,  on  argument  for  Being  of 
God,  II,  19  f.,  35,  110. 


INDEX 


587 


Science,  anthropomorphizing  neces- 
sary in,  I,  321  f.;  aims  and  ideals 
of,  I,  412  f.;  methods  of,  I,  413  f.; 
influence  of,  on  religious  develop- 
ment, I,  423  f.;  restrictions  of, 
II,  448  f. 

Scotus,  Erigena,   I,  344,  446. 

Self,  the  Absolute,  I,  253  f.,  263  f., 
265,  333  f.,  344  f.,  347  f.,  595, 
II,  13  f.,  81  f.,  91  f.,  139  f.,  143  f., 
259  f.,  345  f.;  the  so-called  "sub- 
hminal,"  I,  266  f.,  345;  man,  as 
self-determining,  I,  333  f.,  II,  341  f., 
349  f.;  the  individual,  I,  341  f., 
353  f.,  595  f.,  603  f.,  II,  482  f., 
484  f.,  490,  528  f.;  the  so-called 
"social,"  II,  353  f.;  immortaHty  of 
the,  II,  481  f.,  490  f.,  510  f.,  518  f., 
528  f.,  538  f.;  actuality  of,  II,  536  f., 
544  f.;  value  of  the,  II,  544  f. 

Selfhood,  knowledge  of,  I,  16  f., 
II,  341  f.;  developing  conception 
of,  I,  112  f.,  232  f.,  253  f.,  362  f., 
366,  598  f.,  II,  533  f.;  the  gods  as 
having,  I,  177  f.,  232  f.,  598;  ideal 
of,  II,  533  f.;  Greek  estimate  of, 
II,  543  f. 

Semites,  religion  of  the  early,  I,  141, 
204  f.,  219,  II,  182,  395  f.;  general 
characters  of,  I,  204  f.,  219  f. 

Seneca,  I,  430,  II,  190  f. 

Serpent,  worship  of,  I,  79  f.,  100,  170, 
268,  402,  519. 

Sliumunism,  I,  92;  nature  of,  I,  95  f., 
3,S5,  405. 

Shamash,  I,  287,  II,  135,  182. 

Sluing  TI,  I,  193  f.,  224,  386,  393, 
533,  549  f.,  II,    177,  233,  357. 

Sh^^ng  J^n,  II.  429. 

Sheol  rami  ShuAlu),  II,  494,  499,  504. 

Shiiiran,   I,  394. 

Shinto,  I,  164,  173,  385,  520,  II,  164, 
200,  201;  coHmogony  of,  II,  319. 

Shiu-Ki,  I,  172. 

Shiva,  II,  323  f. 

Shiwaii.sm,  I,  295. 

Shraddhu,    I,    171. 


Shushi,  his  doctrine  of  creative  Rea- 
son, II,  321. 

Sin,  consciousness  of,  I,  60  f.,  233  f., 
470,  II,  152  f.,  384;  committed 
against  God,  I,  470  f.,  II,  152  f., 
384;  as  evil,  II,  152  f.;  the  theo- 
cratic form  of  conscience,  II,  384. 

Smend,  on  the  worship  of  Israel,  I, 
526,  527;  sacrifice  among  the 
Arabs,  I,  534;  on  eschatology  of 
Judaism,   II,  505  f.,  507. 

Smith,  Arthur  H.,  on  Chinese  religion, 

I,  173  (note);  and  morality,  I,  464. 
Smith,  W.  Robertson,  on  nature  of 

tubu,  I,  37;  religion  among  the 
Semites,  I,  141,  204  f.,  455,  525; 
and  Greeks,  I,  400;  on  creeds,  I, 
490. 

Sociology,  relation  of,  to  study  of 
religion,  I,  15  f.,  276  f. 

5o7na-plant,  worship  of,  I,  58,  101  f. 

Sorcerer,  different  examples  of,  I, 
104. 

Soul,  conception  of,  in  all  things,  I, 
103  f.,  Ill  f.,  147  f.,  177  f.,  II,  488, 
500  f.;  the  World-Soul,  I,  147  f., 
183,  326  f.,  II,  501  f.;  importance 
of,  in  religion,  I,  232  f.;  existence 
of,  after  death,  II,  479  f.,  4S4  f., 
493  f.,  516  f.;  immortality  of  the, 

II,  481  f.,  487  f.,  490  f.,  500  f., 
518  f.,  542  f.;  reality  of,  II,  482  f.; 
number  of  souls,  II,  488  f.,  501  f. ; 
transmigration  of  the,  II,  492 
(note),  496  f. ;  Greek  conception  of, 
II,  500  f.,  542  f.;  Platonic  philoso- 
phy of,  II,  .503;  separability  of, 
from  the  body,  II,  516  f.,  51Sf.; 
argimients  again.st,  II,  519  f., 
52()f.;  and  for,  II,  528  f.,  531  f., 
540  f. 

Spencer  and  Gillen,  on  totemisni  in 
.\ustniliH,  I,  99;  religion  of  tribes 
of  Austnilia,  I,  136,  145. 

Silencer,  Herbert,  on  origin  of  reli- 
gion, I,  148;  God  as  infinite,  II,  53, 
228  f.;  on  ethical  man    II,  9*)  f. 


588 


INDEX 


Spinoza,  I,  5,  286;  on  nature  of  sub- 
stance, II,  261  f. 

Spirit,  conception  of,  in  religion,  I, 
157,  349,  II,  69  f.;  God  as,  I,  349  f., 
409  f.,  II,  69  f.,  105  f.,  403;  spiritu- 
ality, struggle  for,  II,  385  f. 

Spiritism,  religion  as  "unreflecting," 

I,  89  f.,  92  f.,  104  f.,  112  f.,  137, 
142  f.,  220  f.,  370,  II,  122,  479. 

Starbuck,  I,  276  f.  (note),  292  (note), 

342  (note),  II,  14. 
Steinen,  von  den,  I,  480. 
Steinmeyer,  on  miracles,  II,  436. 
Stones,  worship  of,  I,  101  f.,  104;  as 

fetishes,  104  f. 
Strauss,  II,  259. 
Sun,   worship   of,   I,    149,    164,    227 

(note),   II,   7. 
Supernatural,    The,    conception    of, 

necessary     to     religion,     I,     39  f., 

II,  264  f.,  272  f.,  276  f.;  relations 
of,  to  the  natural,  II,  264  f.,  272  f., 
282  f. 

Symbolofideismus,  I,  511. 
Syncretism,    nature    of,    in    religion, 

I,  166  f.,  179  f.,  II,  16. 

Tabu,  nature  of,  I,  37  f.,  139,  324, 
565. 

Tangaloa,  the  god,  II,  316  f. 

Taoism,  as  form  of  Spiritism,  I,  104, 
282,  384,  541,  II,  488;  asceticism 
of,  I,  397,  541;  its  doctrine  of  sal- 
vation, I,  541 ;  and  of  souls,  II,  488, 
498. 

Tellus,  cult  of,  I,  392  f. 

Tengere  Kaira  Kan,  I,  385. 

Tertullian,    I,   56    (note). 

Teutons,  religion  of,  I,  146,  190  f., 
192  f.,  389,  480  f.,  II,  184;  princi- 
pal gods  of,  I,  190  f.;  influence  of 
Christianity  on  morals  of,  I,  480  f., 

II,  184. 

Theism,  mystical  forms  of,  I,  381; 
its  doctrine  of  God  as  Ethical 
Spirit,  I,  473  f.,  610  f..  II,  64  f., 
147  f.;    arguments    for,    II,    45  f. 


(note),  82  f.,  221  f.,  294  f.;  position 
of,  II,  221  f.,  230  f.;  doctrine  of 
God  and  the  World,  II,  221  f., 
252  f.,  258  f.,  262  f.,  307  f.;  con- 
flict of,  with  theory  of  evolution, 
II,  291  f.,  294  f.,  299  f.,  308  f. 
Theodicy,    problem    of,    II,     158  f., 

169  f.,    193  f.;    the    Christian,    II, 

170  f.,  193  f.,  215. 

Theology,  relation  of,  to  science,  I, 
421  f.,  II,  231  f.;  and  to  philoso- 
phy, I,  429  f.;  the  so-called  "natu- 
ral," II,  231  f.,  418  f. 

Theriolatry,  I,  93  f.,  99  f.,  101  f.,  181. 

Thiasi,  the,  I,  400. 

Thibet,  religion  of,  I,  578. 

Thing,  conception  of,  I,  367  f.,  II, 
269  f. 

Thompson,  R.  C,  on  evil  spirits  of 
Babylonia,  II,  423. 

Thurn,  Im,  I,  226. 

TiS,mat,  Babylonian  conception,  II, 
318. 

Tiele,  on  science  of  religion,  I,  11  f., 
II,  355  f . ;  on  animism,  I,  90  (note) ; 
on  fetishism,  I,  97  (note);  on  uni- 
versality of  religion,  I,  125;  and  its 
cult,  I,  516;  on  the  religious  com- 
munity, I,  564;  the  conception  of 
God,  II,  5,  72,  203,  284;  and  prob- 
lem of  evil,  II,  163;  theanthropic 
religion,  II,  355;  religion  as  revela- 
tion, II,  413. 

T'ien,  worship  of,  I,  193  f.,  386, 
II,  233  (see  also  Shang  Ti). 

Tigert,  on  conception  of  the  infinite, 
II,  109  (note). 

Totemism,  I,  92;  nature  of,  I,  97  f., 
143  f.,  365,  385;  among  Redskins, 
I,  98  f . ;  not  the  original  religion, 
I,  143  f.,  155  f. 

Toy,  Prof.,  on  sacrifice,  I,  228. 

Trees,  worship  of,  1, 101  f.,  104,  141. 

Trinity,  of  gods  among  Saxons,  I, 
191;  and  Hindus,  II,  323  f. 

Tulsi,  the  plant,  worship  of,  I,  102, 
381. 


INDEX 


689 


Tylor,  I,  49;  analysis  of  religious  con- 
sciousness, I,  266. 

Ueberweg,  on  the  ontological  argu- 
ment, II,  47  f. 

UitzQopochtli,  I,  297,  458. 

"Unconscious,"  the,  a  negative  con- 
ception, I,  267,  II,  60,  94  f. 

Upanishads,  the,  I,  197,  222,  544, 
545,  II,  120,  167,  252  f.,  492. 

"Unknowable,"  the,  conception  of, 
I,  351,  416  f.,  II,  24  f.,  110  f.,  222, 
347. 

Valextixus,  II,  170. 

Value- judgments,  place  of,  in  re- 
ligion, I,  51,  54  f.,  61  f.,  80  f.. 
336  f.;  philosophy  deals  with,  I, 
61  f. 

Vedanta,  philosophy  of,  II,  260. 

Vedas,  writings  of,  I,  222,  242  f.,  401, 
438  f.,  II,  260,  430  f. 

Vemes,  M.,  I,  243. 

Vignoli,  Prof.,  on  primitive  society, 
I,  399. 

Virgin,  the,  worship  of,  I,  164  f. 

Vishnu,  II,  323  f. 

Voltaire,   I,    142,  II,   19,   154. 

Waitz,  on  man's  spiritual  unity,  I, 
20;  on  fetish- worship,  I,  96,  154; 
and  primitive  man,  I,  135,  152, 
154  (note),  241  f. ;  early  monothe- 
ism, I,  225;  influence  of  religion  on 
civilization,  I,  -}05  f.,  455;  on  re- 
ligion and  morality,  I,  455;  on 
prayer,  I,  516;  and  religion  of  the 
Ked.skin.s,   II,  317. 

Wiiitz  and  Cierhmd  (see  Waitz). 

Ward,  Wilfrid,  on  mission  of  the 
Church,  II,  4r>S. 

Wataon,  Prof.,  I,  20C,  271,  II,  34. 

Way  of  Salvation,  religion  a  doctrine 
of,  I,  GO  f.,  107,  I.S5  f.,  540  f.,  'yFA)  f., 
561  f. ;  Huddhistir  doctrine  of,  I, 
197,  472  f.,  5-tOf.;  by  faith.  I. 
486  f.,  552  f.;  Dionysiac  doctrine  of, 


I,  543;  Chinese  view  of,  I,  549  f.; 
the  Christian,  I,  552  f.,  554  f.,  II, 
174  f. 

Weismann,  II,  61. 

Wellhausen,  II,  158. 

Wernle,  I,  588  (note),  II,  511,  547. 

"Wheel  of  Existence,"  the,  I,  546  f. 

Wheeler,    B.    I.,    on   religion   among 

Greeks,  I,  178,  183  (note);  on  Eleu- 

sinian  mysteries,  II,  502. 
Wiedemann,   on   religion   of  ancient 

Egypt,  I,  94,  181,  II,  495  f. 
WUl,  the  human,  I,  333  f.,  338,  601  f., 

II,  156  f.,  349  f.;  the  Divine,  I, 
334  f.,  II,  75,  125  f.,  150  f.,  206, 
217  f.,  349  f.;  World-Ground  as, 
II,  75  f.,  91  f.,  125. 

Williams,  Sir  Monier,  on  religions  of 
India,  I,  94,  171,  461  f.,  574;  on 
Brahmanism,  I,  108. 

Wilson,  J.  Leigh  ton,  I,  127. 

Wissowa,  on  religion  of  the  Romans, 

I,  186  f.  (note),  190,  280,  394  f., 
523. 

Wodan,  I,  190  f. 

World,  unity  of,  I,  112,  II,  72,  230, 
246;    philosophical   conception   of, 

II,  222  f.,  303  f.;  scientific  theory 
of,  II,  330  f.,  447  f.;  different  con- 
ceptions of,  II,  446  f. 

"World-Ground,"  conception  of,  II, 
51  f.,  62  f.,  69  f.,  74  f.,  91  f.,  146  f., 
173,  225  f.,  311  f.,  370  f.,  446  f.; 
a.s  Will,  II,  75  f.,  79  f.,  91  f.,  102  f., 
372;  and  Mind,  II,  77  f.,  83  f.,  91  f.; 
a.s  Personal  Life,  II.   145  f.,  370  f. 

Worship,  nature  of,  I,  155  f.,  51S  f.; 
Greek  notion  of,  I,  17S;  higher 
forms  of,  I,  536  f.  (see  also  Cult). 

Wundt,  on  origin  of  relipion,  I.  1  16; 
and  it.s  relation  to  monility,  I,  456, 
460.  II,  62;  l)elief  in  existence  after 
death,  II,  480. 

Vahweh,  "first-word"  of,  I,  52; 
moral  nature  of,  I,  77  f.,  206  f., 
400  f.,  525,  II,  182,  186  f.,  255  f., 


590 


INDEX 


359;  origin  of  conception  of,  I,  128, 
206  f.,  525  f.,  II,  127;  as  "Lord  of 
hosts,"  I,  220;  holiness  of,  I,  527  f., 
II,  204  f.  (note),  206;  and  Power, 
II,  124;  as  God  of  the  nations, 
II,   469. 

Yoga,  nature  of,  I,  180,  II,  26  f., 
391  f.,  393. 

Yogins  (or  Yogis),  I,  397,  II,  27,  29. 

Zarathustra  (see  Zoroaster). 
Zeller,  on  origin  of  reUgion,  I,  151. 
Zend-Avesta,  I,  198,  245,  II,  391. 
Zeus,    uEschylus'   conception   of,   I, 


185,  465  f.;  justice  of,  II,  183  f., 
357;  Epictetus'  conception  of,  II, 
357  f. 

Zi,  worship  of,  I,  155. 

Zoroaster,  I,  198,  II,  165,  391. 

Zoroastrianism,  its  worship  of  fire, 
I,  175;  its  general  characteristics, 
I,  198  f.,  II,  165  f.;  doctrine  of 
evil,  II,  165  f.,  320  f.;  and  of  crea- 
tion, II,  320  f. 

Zulus,  belief  of,  in  "creator  gods," 
I,  225  f.;  clairvoyance  among,  I. 
267. 

Zunis,  II,  315. 


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